Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore   

Power cut throws a spanner in the works of textile units

COIMBATORE: Textile units in the State are grappling with production losses and escalating costs as they are facing five hours of scheduled power cut every day, apart from tripping. The units very often go without power for six to seven hours and tripping ranges from two to seven times a day, according to industry representatives here.

The two lakh powerlooms in Coimbatore district run two shifts of 12 hours each a day.

“With six hours of power disruption a day, we are unable to run the looms continuously even for one shift. The workers remain idle when there is no power and only a few units have generators,” says P. Kumarasamy, secretary, Coimbatore District Job Working Powerloom Unit Owners’ Association.

According to K.V. Srinivasan, chairman, Southern India Mills’ Association, some of the textile mills plan to start units in Andhra Pradesh, where power charges are lower.

Tamil Nadu produces nearly 50 per cent of the yarn in the country and accounts for a third of the size of the country’s textile industry. Textiles are the single largest consumer of grid power in the State. Its connected load is 1,777 MW, which is 47 per cent of the total high tension load.

Most of the textile machinery and equipment have pneumatic controls and drives.

The compressor pressure goes down when there is a tripping and it takes 20-25 minutes for the machinery to resume normal operations. Machinery is damaged due to frequent tripping. Cost-wise, power constitutes 13-15 per cent of the turnover for the mills.

Mr. Srinivasan points out that the textile units have about 100 MW of furnace oil generator sets and about 1,500 MW of high speed diesel oil generator sets. When fuel costs were lower, they found it viable to run completely on these captive power plants.

Now that fuel costs have shot up steeply, the production cost of yarn goes up by Rs.40 a kg if the generator is run for eight hours.

This has resulted in the capacity utilisation coming down to 60-70 per cent in most mills. Even in mills that have export commitments, capacity utilisation is only 85 per cent now, which will come down further in summer.

The actual generation capacity in the State is about 13,460 MW, including that of independent power plants and Central generation stations available to the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board.

Industries in the State have suggested a ‘diesel captive generation and consumption model’ wherein the units and the government share the cost of running the captive generator sets now remaining idle. Mr. Srinivasan explains the cost of operating the gensets works out to Rs.9.90 a unit (excluding fixed costs, for well maintained sets that yield over 3.5 units for a litre of diesel).

The industry has suggested that the government could bear Rs.4.80 a unit (75 per cent of the additional cost) and collect Rs.1.60 a unit by way of fuel surcharge from HT and commercial power consumers while reimbursing the total additional cost to industrial units that run these generator sets.

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