Power crisis: Punjab is paying price for wrong policies of successive govts, say power engineers

The Punjab State Electricity Board (PSEB) Engineers’ Association questioned the premature closure of thermal plants at Bathinda and two units at Ropar from January 1, 2018, which aggravated the power crisis as these units were closed without carrying out any techno-commercial analysis.

Had these units been functioning at present then the power crisis would have been mitigated to some extent, said general secretary of association Ajay Pal Singh Atwal.

J S Dhiman, president of the association, said, “The Talwandi Sabo Power Limited (TSPL) thermal plant, which has a generation capacity of 1980 MW, had failed to ensure reliable operations last summer. Association demands that an immediate special performance audit of this plant be carried out to ensure energy security during the coming peak summer months.”

The engineers said that the state’s power crisis is a consequence of insufficient coal supply, inadequate coal stocks in the power plants and a failure of independent power producers (IPPs ) to meet the demands in times of need.

As per available data, Punjab was facing about 2,000 MW shortage till Friday evening resulting in long power cuts across the state.This shortfall reduced to 930 MW by Friday evening. The situation is expected to worsen during the months of June and July.

The association said that non-payment of subsidy bills by the Punjab government has added to the distress of PSPCL to make timely payments for power purchase and coal purchase. Subsidy bill to the tune of Rs 9,020 crore is unpaid by the Punjab government for the year 2021-22. As of date, Rs 2,679 crore is pending against state government departments.

The association said Supercritical Thermal Plants in place of Ropar plant be executed to reduce dependency on other state plants, keeping in view the power requirement of the future.

The association appealed to consumers and farmer organisations to cooperate with power engineers as this situation was beyond their control.

The other association, All India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF), said that every ministry claims that they are not responsible for the present mess in the power sector. Now they have diverted the issue and linked it to the state’s inability to make timely payments to coal companies.

Spoksperson of AIPEF V K Gupta said, “Punjab is undergoing an unprecedented power crisis due to insufficient coal supply, inadequate coal stocks in the power plants, failure of IIPs at most crucial times, non-operationalisation of Pachwara coal mine, no addition in state sector generation, unwanted closure of 880 MW state sector capacity thermal plants at Bathinda and Ropar, not adding enough state sector
generation keeping in view the growth in power demand due to heatwave conditions.”

There is a power crisis, especially in the northern region, as Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand are all facing load shedding from three to eight hours daily, said Gupta.

In northern region, there is a total shortage of about 1,436 lakh units. Rajasthan has a maximum shortage of 435 lakh units, followed by Haryana at 337 lakh units, Punjab at 306 lakh units, and UP at 295 lakh units.

AIPEF said that the Central Electricity Authority monitors 173 thermal plants across the country and 106 thermal plants have critical coal stock as per the latest daily coal report of April 27. In the case of 150 thermal plants using domestic coal, the number of thermal plants with critical coal stock has increased from 81 to 86 in one week. In the private sector, the coal plant with critical coal stock has also increased from 28 to 32.