The Tamil Nadu Regulatory Commission (TNERC) has approved a proposal from Tangedco for procurement of 1,000 MW of round-the-clock power for March and April.
In its original petition, Tangedco had sought procurement of short-term power of 1,000 MW each for February, March and April.
It had stated that the net power availability, which could be sustained from February to April, would be in the range of 13,600-14,000 MW, while the anticipated demand would be in the range of 14,800-15,500 MW, resulting in a deficit of 1,200 MW to 1,500 MW. However, the TNERC directed Tangedco to make realistic estimate of its power requirement, pointing out that expenses on power purchase were the single largest item accounting for more than 70% of the entire revenue from the sale of power of Tangedco.
“Though it is the duty of Tangedco to supply the reliable and quality power 24x7, it should properly estimate the requirement of power and purchase accordingly so that the power purchase cost is optimised,” the regulator said.
In its original petition, Tangedco had said out of the State-owned thermal power station capacity of 4,320 MW, only 2,000 MW or 46% could be sustained because of monsoon affecting coal mines and shortage of coal.
‘Shrinking share’
From the State’s share of 6,034 MW from the Central Generating Station like (NLC/NTPC, the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant among others), only 3,000-4,000 MW would be available, pointing to the outage at the Vallur Unit II and forced outage at the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KKNPP) Unit 2, Tangedco said.
However, the TNERC asked Tangedco make a realistic estimate of power availability. Based on its directive, Tangedco revised its estimation of the availability of power of 4,020 MW from its own thermal generation out of installed capacity of 4,320 MW, instead of 2,000 MW estimated originally.
It revised its estimation of the availability of 4,535 MW power from the Central Generating Stations sources, instead of 3000 MW to 4000 MW projected earlier in the petition.
Based on the revised estimation, Tangedco dropped its initial plan of procuring short-term power of 1,000 MW for February 2018. It pruned its requirement to 550 MW for March and 450 MW for April respectively from 1,000 MW each.
