Coal shortage cripples Bellary plant

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There is no respite in sight for the power woes of the state with the Bellary thermal plant unit 2 which was scheduled to begin operations in May, failing to do this owing to a last minute back-out by the Central government when it came to meeting coal requirements.

The shortage in coal supply is also likely to affect the operations of unit 1 of the thermal plant.
Since February 25, the state government had started the trial and commissioning process for the Bellary Thermal plant unit 2 of 500 MW capacity.

Following discussions with the Central government, it was agreed that 2 million tonnes of coal will be supplied from Mahanadi Coalfields Limited(MCL) to Bellary unit 2.

“We had started the process using the coal stock of BTPS unit 1 as we had been promised that there would be an allocation from MCL soon. However, the promised supply never reached the plant,” a senior official from the energy department disclosed.

The state government based on the assurance, had started making inauguration plans for mid-May. Earlier the plan was to have the inauguration in February itself. This had to be dropped as there was no final assurance on coal supply even after several rounds of talks.

The state government is now facing a shortage of coal for Bellary unit 1 too. “We were assured that MCL will supply 2 million tonnes of coal as a start-off allocation for eight months. In the meantime, the coal meant for Bellary unit 1 was being used,” the official explained.

Once BTPS unit 2 is commissioned, Bengaluru could have expected a good share of power from it.
However, energy minister Shobha Karandlaje was confident that there would not be any power shortage. “We will be meeting again with coal ministry officials, this is just a temporary hitch.

The coal allocation will come through. We are already buying power daily, hence there will no shortage,” said Ms Karandlaje.