Power crisis deepens in Nalco

ANGUL: Faced with further cut in power supply, the authorities of National Aluminium Company (Nalco) have shut down another 60 pots in its smelter plant here from Friday, according to a Nalco official source. With this, 120 of the 960 pots of the smelter plant have been shut down. The production of aluminium automatically slashed to 1,050 tonne per day from the normal of more than 1,200 tonne. This loss is `2 crore per day. The source also reveals that currently the aluminium producing smelter plant is facing a shortage of 200 MW of power and the power plant is short of 2,000 tonne of coal per day than the normal. “While we need about 12,000 tonne of coal to operate six 110 MW units in the power plant, we get an average of 8,000 tonne from Talcher coalfield. We make up the gap by using the import coal and procuring coal from other sources like e-auction,” adds the source. The captive power plant of Nalco has ten 110 MW units but only eight are operated and two others are standby. But due to coal shortage from this financial year it had to shut down another two units earlier this month. Even the six units functional are not operating in full load due to want of coal.Despite efforts by Nalco to improve the cola supply position after the shut down of 60 pots early this month, no headway has been made so far. Unless coal supply position from Talcher improves shortly, the company will plunge into further deep into the crisis with more and more pots shut down. An official from MCL said steps are being taken to supply more coal to Nalco as per their linkage. It has so far met 96 per cent of linkage coal.