New Delhi, June 29: Delhi is facing a coal shortage and has only 24 hours' stock to run the power plants providing electricity to the Delhi-NCR regions, said the Arvind Kejriwal government. If coal is not provided to power-plants run by the state government, then the city is likely to face load shedding problems.

Following the crisis, Delhi Power Minister Satyendra Jain has written a letter to the Union Power Minister RK Singh asking him to fulfil the acute shortage of coal to avoid a blackout in Delhi on Wednesday. Before this, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had also written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to direct the railways to provide more transportation rakes to transport coal to Delhi-NCR power plants.

The letter written by Jain to the power minister on Wednesday reads, "As you are aware the thermal generating stations in Delhi NCR--Dadri I and II, Jhajjar and Badarpur-- are facing coal shortage for the past several days due to non-availability of transportation rakes with Indian railways. Since June 19, 2018, the coal stock has reached approximately 90,000 MT today, which is only one and a half days’ requirement. Normally, the stock of at least 15 days is required to be maintained by these power plants. The situation is, therefore, extremely critical. The weather condition is also not favourable, and as a result, the peak load of the city crosses 6900 MW every now and then.”

 

The coal requirement of Delhi for each day is about 56,000 Million Tonnes (MT), but the availability is much lower. With the increase in depletion of coal stock, the city’s power demand touched an all-time high of 6,934 MW on June 8 reportedly, and the discoms (electricity distribution companies of India) warned that the demand could even cross the 7,000 MW mark in the coming weeks.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jun 29, 2018 02:14 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).