Delhi’s power crisis might lead to a blackout

• On Wednesday, the power minister of Delhi wrote a letter to the Union power minister regarding the acute shortage of coal in the Capital.
  
• The current stock at the stations is sufficient only for 1.5 days of power generation.
  
• The Delhi power minister termed the matter as “critical” and warned Delhi of blackouts if the situation persists.
  

On Wednesday, the Delhi Power Minister Satyendar Jain wrote a letter to the Union Power Minister, RK Singh, regarding the acute shortage of coal in the Capital’s thermal power stations.

The thermal generating stations in Dadri I and II, Jhajjar and Badarpur are facing coal shortage due to the non-availability of wagons required for the transportation of coal. The supply has been on the down slope for almost 10 days now, since 19 June.

The thermal stations generally keep a 15 day stock of coal with themselves, however, the current stock at the stations is sufficient only for 1.5 days of power generation.

At least 56,000 metric tonnes (MT) of coal to required to generate power for a day in Delhi and the thermal stations have only about 90,000 MT of coal stock left. Considering the high power demands of the season, even this little stock is depleting fast.

But, this is not a sudden crisis as Delhi has been facing power shortage for weeks now. On 26 May, the city’s coal stock had come down to just 35,100 MT which is sufficient only for half a days’ supply. The government had then taken the matter to the Union Railway minister, Piyush Goyal after which it got better.

However, the situation has now worsened agained, partially due to the current weather conditions that has pushed power demands through the roof. The city’s power demand reached an all time high of 6,934 MW on 8 June and is expected to even touch 7,000 MW in the subsequent weeks.

Jain termed the matter as “critical” and warned Delhi of blackouts if the situation persists. He has requested Singh to “personally intervene” with the Indian Railways so that wagons are urgently provided as a priority to transport coal to the Capital.

Worried over the power shortage, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has also written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal seeking their intervention.