Small power cos resume generation after years, rescue power-hit TN

Small private power generators have come to the rescue of Tamil Nadu which faced a power crisis last week as Central thermal and nuclear units failed to generate nearly 800 MW of power required for the state.

Tamil Nadu faced a political storm last week over the long power cuts in many rural districts. Following this, the state government asked all private power generators in the state to start generating power using naphtha, gas or oil.

After many years, these private power companies which have their units in Tamil Nadu on Saturday started power generation and provided more than 40 million units.

“Apart from ramping up our own thermal units, we also asked all private companies to start generating power and all these steps came in handy to supply power as per the demand. With no power available in the Electricity Exchange, many small thermal units are using Naphtha, oil and gas generated power,” said a senior Tangedco official who did not wish to be named.

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“We asked the private power generators as the cost of power generated using Naphtha or oil is much less than power available in the market. Some of these power generators started their units after nearly 10 years,” said the official.

On Thursday and Friday last week, several Central units stopped generating power to the extent of 796MW and due to this many villages and small towns in rural areas faced power cuts.

The issue was raised in the state assembly by opposition leader Edappadi K Palaniswami, leading to a walkout as the opposition was not happy with reply by state power minister Senthil Balaji.

Meanwhile, power supply from the Central thermal units was restored and more than 108.94 million units was supplied to Tangedco. “Many Central thermal units which tripped last week started generating power from Saturday evening and we also asked all captive power companies to supply power,” said the official.

Captive power alone contributed more than 12 million units. “We have asked all these non-coal thermal companies to generate power continuously so that our dependence on Electricity Exchange will be less or nil. We are also hoping that wind power generation will also pick up in the coming days as per the forecast,” said the official.

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Tamil Nadu has been seeing a steady demand of 17,000 MW of power, which has come down marginally to 16,500 MW during peak hours.

“We expect the power demand to increase in the coming days but it is unlikely to cross 17,000 MW as many educational institutions are closing for summer holidays. In the future we are hopeful to prevent any power cuts due to shortage,” said the official.