NEW DELHI: While load-shedding reached a high of 843 MW late on Friday night, there was no relief from long power cuts for Delhiites on Saturday as well with the Pragati and Gas Turbine plants remaining shut due to non-availability of gas on account of the Gujarat floods and the total outages from all plants supplying power to the Capital shooting up to a whopping 1,340 MW.

With no new purchase of power from any other source, the Capital's power distribution companies resorted to rotational load-shedding all over the city due to which four to 12 hours of power cuts were experienced in most colonies. It was feared that since the peak demand for Saturday, which was 3,126 MW till 8 p.m., would go up further late into the night, the crisis would become all the more acute forcing further cuts to keep the system and frequency intact.

The bane for Delhi remained the poor availability of power. The 1,500 MW Nathpa Jhakri plant, from which Delhi draws 342 MW of power, remains shut due to high silt levels. Then a 210-MW unit of Badarpur Thermal Power Station is also closed due to maintenance since its hydrogen coolant had leaked a couple of months ago. To make matters worse, the gas-fired Pragati and Gas Turbine plants were forced to close down due to non-availability of gas. This further decreased the supply by around 470 MW.

Though Delhi has tried to remain afloat by overdrawing from the Northern Grid, that has not made much of an impact since the over-drawal has been to the tune of around 200 MW only. This has not been able to compensate for the Capital's own loss of production. As against an installed capacity of 1,700 MW, Delhi on Saturday was producing only about 750 MW -- a good 950 MW less.

Principal Secretary (Power) Rakesh Mehta had stated on Thursday that to overcome the shortage in supply Delhi would be over-drawing about 500 MW from the Northern Grid and taking another 200 MW from Rajasthan. But clearly that has not been enough.

In the short term, there appears to be no relief from the power cuts as the gas supply would take at least three days to resume and the prospects of the Nathpa Jhakri plant returning to operations are bleak. Sources said the future appears dark since no new power plants were on the anvil and the proposed plant in Chhattisgarh had also run into trouble.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail