Major blow to Singareni: NTPC to purchase coal from SECL

Hyderabad:In a major setback to the Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL), the NTPC is set to purchase 28 million metric tonnes of coal from the South Eastern Coal Fields (SECL) at Korba, which is a subsidiary of Coal India Limited. NTPC is likely to get the coal at between `3,400 and `3, 800 per tonne besides transport charges from Coal India as against `5, 200 charged by SCCL.

According to senior official sources, the National Thermal Power Corporation would go with coal from SECL for its 1,600 MW of Ramagundam power plant and another 800x3 MW (2,400 MW) stations for stage-II of the Telangana Power Plant, which is coming up at Ramagundam.

Besides the 1,600 MW plant, NTPC is also operating a 100 MW floating solar power plant. Works on a similar 56 MW plant and another 120 MW ground mounted solar power plant will become operational by August.

Sources said that the Telangana government had entered into a power purchase agreement with NTPC for purchase of 800 MW of power from Stage II of the Telangana Power Plant at Ramagundam. Telangana would be getting power for `5.50-`6 per unit.

Andhra Pradesh had also entered into an agreement to purchase 1,000 MW, Karnataka 600 MW and Punjab 400 MW. These power plants would be commissioned within the next four and half years.

NTPC’s total thermal and renewable power installed capacity in the southern states was 11,172 MW, which is around 13.97 per cent of the group’s total power generation capacity.

The NTPC has so far made an investment of `60,168 crore in the southern states. With a total installed capacity of 79,930 MW, NTPC is meeting 16 per cent energy requirement of southern states.

The national average of NTPC plants’ plant load factor is 77.42 per cent, which is higher than the country’s pay load factor of 69.59 per cent. PLF is a measure of how efficiently a power plant is utilising its installed capacity.