The State government’s proposed decision to hand over operation and maintenance of Damodaram Sanjeevaiah Thermal Power Station at Nelaturu in SPSR Nellore district to a private player on a 25-year lease has run into rough weather with the employees and Opposition parties stoutly opposing the move.
“We will fight tooth and nail against the State government’s power sector policy. We will rope in all employee organisations and like-minded opposition parties for the purpose,” said Centre for Indian Trade Unions State president Ch. Narasinga Rao.
Likening the Jagan Mohan Reddy government’s decision “to selling the cow to buy milk,” Mr. Narasinga Rao, who also spearheads the struggle against privatisation of the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant by the Centre, said the State-owned Andhra Pradesh Generation Corporation(APGENCO) generated power at a highly competitive cost of ₹3.14/kWh at a time when the State government purchased power by taking part in power auctions online at a very high cost.
It was due to the “wrong policies” of the government that the plant was functioning much below its capacity, added AP State Power Employees’ Joint Action Committee chairman P. Chandrasekhar, who leads engineers, employees and contract workers for a protracted struggle.
The first unit of the plant, also known as Krishnapatnam Thermal plant, with a capacity to generate 800 MW power came into being in March 2014 and the second unit with another 800 MW capacity in March 2015. The third unit with 800 MW got its nod during the previous Chandrababu Naidu regime and is nearing completion.
However, with not enough coal reserves of its own and issues relating to imported coal, the 2x800 MW power plant equipped with supercritical boilers now performs much below its power generation capacity and is all set for going into the hands of a private player who rules the roost in the east coast.
The power plant, funded by Power Finance Corporation and KfW bank of Germany, has been designed to produce power by mixing of 70% domestic coal and 30% imported coal by using sea water for cooling. But the poor quality of imported coal had adversely affected power generation at the power plant, lamented TDP politburo member Somireddy Chandramohan Reddy.
Over one lakh tonnes of ‘substandard’ imported coal remained in disuse. The power plant authorities found no takers at even half of the price purchased by it, he said, adding that responsibility had not been fixed yet for the huge financial loss incurred by the power plant. For various reasons, plans to expand power generation capacity of the public sector plant to 4,000 MW had been put off.
