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Patna,(BiharTimes): Bihar continues to remain an area of darkness for the fourth day on Wednesday.
As if the cut in the state allocation from the central pool was not enough came the news of the train accident on Sunday disrupting the coal supply to the National Thermal Power Plant at Kahalgaon in Bhagalpur district. Since Bihar hardly generates its own power it had to rely entirely on the NTPC. At present the state is getting around 800 MW of power against scheduled 1700 MW. |
While the entire state is plunged in darkness for the fourth consecutive days the state capital Patna continues to have power supply. Pandals of Saraswati Puja (at many places idols are yet to be immersed) remains decorated with huge bulbs and tubelights.
According to reports five of the seven units of the Kahalgaon Super Thermal Power Project (KhSTPP) have shut down production due to stoppage in coal supply and sharp fall in coal reserve following the damage to coal-carrying rail wagons and merry-go-round (MGR) tracks near Bochahi-Fatehpur village last Sunday.
Productions unit numbers 2, 3, 4, 6 and 7 have come to standstill. Production has dropped to 536 MW at the plant which has generation capacity of 2,340 MW. Reports said that the 1st unit has been producing only 168 MW and the 5th 368 MW. Power production in the remaining units is down to zero.
Coal is being fed to Kahalgaon plant from ECL (Jharkhand) by NTPC owned rail racks through a dedicated MGR. Last Sunday thieves disconnected the vacuum of rail rack in order to pilfer coal. An accident was caused in the process.. This resulted in severe damage to rail wagons and MGR.
Two coal racks arrived at the plant through the Eastern Railway tracks, that is passenger line, after the NTPC alerted the Centre and state about the gravity of the situation. Officials fear that if coal supply is not augmented immediately then the units nos. 1 and 5 would also have to be shut down which would result in closure of all the production units.
NTPC officials are camping at the accident site efforts are on to remove the damaged wagons. It may take a couple of days for track to be repiaced and damaged wagons removed.
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