Lehra Mohabbat best plant in state sector
Yogindra Mohan

Patiala

Lehra Mohabbat Thermal Plant (920 MW) was the only plant in state sector which achieved more than 100 per cent plant load factor (PLF) in the country, as per latest Central Electricity Authority (CEA) report.

MR Parihar, Chief Engineer, Lehra Mohabbat, said that the total generation at plant was 692.655 million units with 101.19 per cent PLF. Even the lowest ever auxiliary consumption of 7.36 per cent was achieved during the month.

He further said that as per CEA report, PLF of thermal stations during January’12 was 76.38 per cent in comparison to 80.17 per cent during January’11. The reduction in PLF was due to less generation by some stations due to various forced outages, transmission evacuation problems and coal shortages. The thermal power stations received about 36.0 MT of coal against the requirement of 39.1 MT during January’2012. It was about 92 per cent of the total requirement of coal during the month. Loss of generation of about 547 MU due to shortage of coal during the month of January’12 alone has so far has been reported. A number of thermal power plants continue to grapple with dwindling coal stocks.

The coal stock of 37 thermal power stations were critical with less than seven days coal stock as on February 15. Out of these 21 plants were having coal stock of less than four days and comes under super critical category which is even more worrisome. There are four plants namely Jhajjar, Kodarama. Durgapur and Anapara C which have been synchronized but coal supply to them has not yet started by Coal India.

Four thermal power stations namely Kakrapara, Lehra Mohabbat, Sipat and Torangallu achieved PLF more than 100 per cent during January. Among them Kakrapara had the highest PLF of 101.5 per cent. A total of 30 coal based thermal power stations with an aggregate installed capacity of 28600 MW achieved PLF more than 90 per cent.