All 4 Ropar thermal plant units trip; PSPCL loses 700 MW

Aman Sood

Patiala, June 13

A day ahead of the scheduled power supply to the paddy fields in the border belt, Punjab faced a tough situation after all four units of the Ropar thermal plant tripped this afternoon, resulting in an immediate loss of about 700 MW of power and further leading to unscheduled outages in some parts of the state.

According to PSPCL officials, Ropar units tripped around 12.15 pm due to the failure of 220-KV supply.

“The peak load will begin from tomorrow when the border belt starts the paddy season officially. Today, the demand reached 10,485 MW and despite the thermal units shutting down, we met it and had over 300 MW of spare power,” said a top PSPCL official privy to the developments.

As per the PSPCL officials, eight hours of assured agricultural power supply shall start in the border belt from Tuesday and from June 17 in Malwa. “At present, the demand is expected to stay around 13,000 MW and will peak once the paddy season supply starts in the entire state after June 20. The power demand will be at its peak in another 10 days and a lot will depend on the monsoon rains,” said All India Power Engineers’ Federation spokesperson VK Gupta.

Last year, the state’s power demand had crossed the 15,500-MW mark, which the PSPCL had failed to meet. However, Power Minister Harbhajan Singh ETO has already assured that the PSPCL was doing its best to serve the state consumers “despite a rise in the demand” and “ample arrangements have been made to ensure eight-hour supply to paddy fields”.

The PSPCL expects the power demand to touch 15,500 MW this season, of which it is likely to arrange for 6,500 MW from state sources, including thermals, hydel and solar biomass units.

Another officer involved with the paddy power arrangements said 8,500 MW from other states would be arranged, taking the total to 15,000 MW. “Punjab will have 4,200 MW from the central plants, 2,800 MW through the ‘banking arrangement’, 500 MW short-term purchase and 1,000 MW through additional allocation by the Centre from unallocated power. If need arises, supply from the power exchange will be purchased on a day-to-day basis.”

2 UNITS REVIVED, CONSUMERS NOT HASSLED

Two units have been revived and the remaining shall be operational by midnight. Barring some outages in Ropar and Ferozepur villages, no cuts were slapped on any category of consumers. Also, some loss to the farm supply was compensated later. PSPCL officials