In a meeting taken up by Planning Commission members K Kasturirangan and B K Chaturvedi here to discuss the issue, they asked the Union Power Ministry to explore the possibility to help the State to overcome the problem.

In a bid to provide sufficient power to consumers in the coming months especially during examinations and the harvest season, Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa sent the team headed by Chief Secretary S V Ranganath to discuss with the Planning Commission.

In the meeting, the State requested the Centre to double the allocation of power from the central grid from the current 1,543 mega watt. The State government has experienced a reduction in power availability from its share of the central generation stations.

Against an allocation of 1,543 MW daily, on an average about 1,250 MW is being received by the State resulting in a shortage of 293 MW per day. The Union Power Ministry officials promised to find out the reason for this loss and try to make it up at the earliest, sources in the Planning Commission told Deccan Herald.

Apart from this, the State also requested the Centre to provide coal linkage to VIII unit of Raichur Thermal Power Station (RTPS) and supply sufficient coal to other units of the station which are currently facing shortage.   

The State is currently producing 7300 MW of power per day against the requirement of 8000 MW. The State's only thermal power station -RTPS- is  producing only 60 per cent of its installed capacity due to shortage of coal as well as technical glitch in first and second units of the station, the State Government officials explained at the meeting.

The meeting was also attended by Department of Coal secretary C Balakrishnan, Power secretary H Brahma, and Petroleum secretary S Sundareshan from the Centre’s side while from Karnataka, additional chief secretary to Energy Department K Jairaj and principal secretary to Department of Infrastructure V Madhu and Karnataka Power Corporation managing director S M Jaamdar were present.

As a measure to overcome the shortage, the Karnataka Government has invoked section 11 of the Electricity Act, 2003 recently to get power generators to operate and maintain the generating stations to their maximum exportable capacity and plant load factor and supply power only to the State grid.

Sharavathi may step up output

Power generation is possible at Sharavathi hydel power station till the end of June as Linganamakki reservoir located upstream of the project has 33.35 per cent water of its total storage capacity, Karnataka Power Corporation (KPC) officials have said. Water level was recorded at 1,777.5 feet on Tuesday which is nine feet more than the last year’s figure.

Additional load is exerted on Sharavathi project which caters to nearly 25 pc power needs of the State due to technical snags at thermal power units. Officials said that 20 to 22 million units power is generated daily at Sharavathi project at present by using 7,000-7,500 cusec water. The four units can generate same quantum of power for 70 days with the present storage capacity.