Chennai: After four months of relief from power cuts, Tamil Nadu is slipping back again into darkness. With demand far outstripping supply, the state has announced outages to bridge the gap. Even as the state government gives a push to its power projects, it faces heat from the opposition for slack implementation.
The industry and the public are bracing for two hours of no power in Chennai every day, while the other districts will be without it for four to six hours. The state is short of 2500 MW, but a confident Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa is promising an early relief.
Placing her bets on her government's ongoing projects, Jayalalithaa blames the Centre and the DMK for the present spell of load shedding.
Jayalalithaa said, "Those power stations which were under the state government's restrictions were functioning as usual. But the power stations which are under the Centre including Kalpakkam and Neyveli malfunctioned as if it was decided earlier, because of this there is a shortfall in power generation upto 2500 MW. Consequently the state is forced to face power cuts again and the DMK is using this situation for election campaign."
But her statement hasn't gone down well with the DMK. It has been quick to hit out at the Jaya government for not fast racking the power projects to meet the demand.
DMK spokesperson TKS Ilangovan said, "The project with BHEL and the TNEB was signed in 2008. This project was at Udangudi. In 2012 she said the state government is going alone, funding the total cost of Rs 8000 crore by themselves. Till today not a stone is moved in the 1600 MW project. She hasn't done anything, not even taken steps to produce 1 MW of power. She talks high. She said Rs 2000 crore will be spent in power projects in May 2013. How much money is allocated, let her say."
The experts cite following reasons for the acute power shortage.
- While the Tamil Nadu Government has announced a slew of projects in the past two and a half years, some of the major power projects are still in the preliminary stages. These include the Ennore SEZ thermal Power project, NCTPS stage III thermal power project, Nagapattinum Ultra Mega thermal power project, Cheyyur Ultra mega thermal power project and Udangudi Power Corporation.
- Several thermal plants have been shut down for annual maintenance or due to coal shortage. For example; One unit of Vallur thermal plant which a joint venture of TNEB and National Thermal Power corporation is not functioning while both units of north Chennai plant are also down.
- But there is some respite for the State. As the much delayed Koodankulam Nuclear power project has started producing 400mws of power to the central grid and so far unit 1 has produced 190 million units of power. Tamil Nadu gets the lion's share of nearly 54.41 per cent of the total power generated in the state.
- The experts add that the arrival of wind power helped the state plug the power problem last time. But this time around, the total demand is around 10,000 MW, while supply amounts to only 9,000 MW.
Jayalalithaa may have assured the state Assembly that Tamil Nadu will become a power surplus state by 2014 but with political heat and demand-supply weighing against it, the state government may have to pull power out of its hat to meet the deadline it has set for itself.
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