A view of Patna on Tuesday evening. Picture by Ashok Sinha

Patna, Feb. 8: Power crisis in the state worsened further today as the central allocation came down to less than half of the scheduled 1722MW, and the coal crisis at the National Thermal Power Corporation’s (NTPC) Kahalgaon units continued for the third consecutive day.

The state received only 806MW from the scheduled central allocation today. Yesterday, it had received 811MW against the scheduled 1722MW.

At NTPC’s Kahalgaon plant, power generation in five of the seven units came to halt due to the coal crisis which arose after the derailment of merry-go round (MGR) railways, NTPC’s rail transport system, on Sunday.

Patna, being the state capital, remained unaffected from the power crisis the rest of the state is reeling under.

Bihar State Electricity Board (BSEB) officials, however, said that if the crisis is not brought under control, the board would have no option but to resort to load-shedding in the capital.

“Even Patna, which has been left untouched from the cut in power allocation till now, may have to face load-shedding,” said a board official.

The state gets a fixed share of the power generated from each of the seven units at Kahalgaon, which altogether generates 2340MW. If power generation at any of the plant is stopped, the state feels the immediate impact, a board official said.

The power crisis in the state may aggravate further if the two NTPC units, which are currently running on low capacity load, stop generation in the coming days.

NTPC officials are not ruling out this possibility as the corporation is getting just two rakes (7500-8000 metric tonne) of coal from the railways.

“We don’t have coal stock right now. These two units would also stop working if the railways stops transporting coal to the plant site. Out of the seven units at Kahalgaon, five have already been shut down since Sunday due to the derailment,” an NTPC official said.

The NTPC requires 42,000 to 45,000 metric tones coal per day to run all the seven plants at full capacity load or at least 12-13 rakes (each rake of railway carries around 3,500 to 4,000 metric tonne) per day, he added.

Besides 806MW from central sector, the state got 60MW from its Barauni thermal power plant, giving the BSEB a total of 866MW to meet the energy requirement of the entire state.

The daily power requirement of the state is 2500MW, said BSEB officials.

Out of the 866MW, the board normally provides 413MW to the state capital and keeps 350MW for emergency services,leaving only 100MW for the rest of the state.