Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC) is facing serious problems regarding railway linkage to new DVC projects

CHANDIGARH: “Ensure allocation of coal blocks to central and state sector generating stations on priority and remove constraints in coal movement by rail” All India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF) has written a letter to Prime Minister.

Padamjit Singh Chairman AIPEF has written a letter to Prime Minister giving its views and suggestions for consideration in the proposed review meeting for power and coal sectors to be held on July 1. The letter states that there is a need to give priority to state sector and central sector power projects for allocating of coal mines/ captive coalmines.

In particular the coal blocks which were earlier awarded to NTPC and DVC which were cancelled need to be reconsidered and reviewed In such cases, each power utility must give a time bound action plan for development and utilization of the coal mine and this needs to l be monitored on monthly basis/ quarterly basis .The second suggestion is regarding constraints in coal movement. A number of load centre coal based power station are coming up which are located far from the coal mine. The existing railway transportation system is already saturated. The existing railway system would not be able to take the addition traffic of coal movement for the new power stations. This will lead to stranding of generation capacity due to Railway constraints.

It was earlier envisaged that the dedicated freight corridor would come up by 2014-15, but there is little progress, and the dedicated freight corridor would get delayed to 2017 or beyond. In this case the load centre thermal stations that would get commissioned earlier would face problem of railway transportation, and result in stranded capacity.

The construction work on dedicated freight corridor (eastern) from west Bengal up to Ludhiana was inaugurated by the Prime Minister. Manmohan Singh at Ludhiana in Sept. 2006, but despite a lapse of 5 years, there is little / no progress on the ground. In the meanwhile several state/ central sector thermal projects have come up. and are envisaged to come up in Northern Region,

Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC) is facing serious problems regarding railway linkage to new DVC projects. Capacity of Mejia is being increased from 1340 MW to 2340 MW with commissioning of 2x500 MW Stage-II. However, the Railway Track from Raniganj to Mejia has not been doubled while the present single line/ track is capable of supplying coal for 1340 MW capacity only. With the coming of 2x500 MW stage 2 units, 1000 MW capacity would get stranded. Further 2x500 MW units at Durgapur / Andal, 2x500 MW units at Koderma and 2xd600 MW units at Raghunathpur are in process of being completed / commissioned but the railway track system is not in existence at these projects.

Farakka is a pit head state of NTPC which has to depend upon additional supply of coal by rail. Due to railway constraints, NTPC is now proposing to move coal by barges/ water way transportation. Similarly Kehalgaon STPS of NTPC is having serious coal supply transportation problem, even though is station is located in coal producing state of Bihar. For load centre thermal station located 1000-1500 km from coal mines, the problems would be more serious.

Another serious concern is supply of Chinese equipment to new power plants .In a competitive bidding system for new power plants; Chinese equipment being lower price gets the advantage to win the contract. The bidding process is based mainly on price, whereas quality does not get quantified / specified.

In particular case of two projects which Chinese equipment of M/s Shanghai was supplied through EPC contractor to Reliance and the feedback obtained by engineers who visited China is really shocking. It has been informed that Chinese (Shenghai) equipment comes in three broad quality ranges and the equipment at Yamunanagar, Hisar, and Raghunathpur comes under category ‘C’. When project engineers complained to the Chinese officials regarding poor quality the reply was that at the lowest price/ rate, the better quality cannot be expected.

Electricity. Act 2003, National Electricity Policy and Tariff Policy, mentions that the generation projects can be taken up in State sector. However, for new project the Government has made it mandatory to adopt competitive bidding. Despite this provision several state governments like Uttar Pradesh and Punjab, have notified their own generation policy under which the state govt. can set up thermal projects under MOU route with private sector companies. This contradicts and conflicts with the provision of Tariff policy. Projects awarded under such MOU route will have higher tariff as compared to competitive bid projects, as has been confirmed by CERC.