Bihar sees power shortage amid NTPC plants shutdown; officials deny reports

The shortage, if any, said the official, was only between 7pm and 11pm, when Bihar’s peak load demand is going up to 5500 MW during the last couple of days

Bihar, especially the rural areas, has been facing power shortage following the shutdown of three NTPC units for the past few days. The state was getting around 900MW less power than its average daily power availability of 5,500MW from the central sources following shutdown of three NTPC units due to annual scheduled overhauling and technical snag in unit 1 of the Barh super thermal power plant (STPP), said officials.

Bihar has a daily scheduled allocation of 6030 MW from the NTPC. (File image)

“There is no shortage of power to Bihar as compared to other states like Uttar Pradesh. We are offering 4600 MW power to Bihar of which the state was drawing only 3,300MW on Monday afternoon,” said an NTPC official.

The shortage, if any, said the official, was only between 7pm and 11pm, when Bihar’s peak load demand is going up to 5,500MW during the last couple of days.

Bihar has a daily scheduled allocation of 6,030MW from the NTPC of which the PSU commits 90% assured power, which comes to around 5,500MW.

However, power availability to the state had plummeted to around 4,600MW on Monday due to shutdown of the three units and boiler tube leakage on July 8 in the 660MW unit 1 of the Barh STPP. Bihar gets around 401MW from the Barh unit.

“We have been able to rectify the fault at the Barh plant and the unit is likely to resume generation tonight,” the NTPC spokesperson said.

The 500MW unit 6 of the Farakka STPP, 195 MW unit 4 of the Kanti plant and 250 MW unit 3 of the Bihar Rail Bijlee Company Limited (BRBCL) are under annual maintenance of 45 days from different dates early this month. Shutdown for scheduled maintenance was taken after no objection from the state, the NTPC official said.

Bihar gets 278MW power from these three units, of which 107MW comes from Farakka unit 6, 146MW from Kanti unit 4 and 25MW from BRBCL.

This had forced the state to purchase power from open market and also led to power shedding in rural areas up to five hours in a day, said officials.

On July 8, two more units of the NTPC plant were down. The 250 MW Barauni unit 5 was shut down due to technical issues in the power evacuation system, handled by the state, but was restored the next day. The 660 MW unit 2 of Nabinagar Power Generation Company Limited had developed boiler tube leakage but resumed operation on Monday.

Bihar does not have any thermal power generating source of its own and is solely reliant on central sectors for power supply.