Patna, Feb. 17: Summer has not arrived yet but power-less days have returned to haunt the residents. The state received around 956MW against the allocated 1,772MW. Even on Thursday, Bihar received 687MW from the central sector allocation.

The state, with negligible power generation of around 100-150MW, is heavily dependent on the central sector to meet its daily energy requirement of about 2,500-3,000MW.

Every summer, the state faces severe power shortage owing to the Centre’s lackadaisical approach in supplying power from National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) and National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC) generating units.

Generation had come to a halt at NTPC’s Farakka unit numbers II and III since yesterday. The state purchases another 300MW from the open market. Today’s availability was 1,256MW (956 + 300), which is more than Thursday’s availability of 987MW (687 + 300).

On Thursday, Farakka units II and III, Kahalgaon units IV and unit I of Talcher had stopped power production.

“We received 956MW today which is better than Thursday’s 687MW. Things improved as out of four units of NTPC, unit number IV at Kahalgaon and unit number I at Talcher have started generation,” Bihar State Electricity Board spokesperson H.R. Pandey told The Telegraph. Kahalgaon’s plant had shut down generation because of coal scarcity whereas the Talcher unit was out of order owing to technical problems.

“Power plants at Talcher and Kahalgaon, which supply around 170-180MW and 60-70MW respectively to the state, have started generation but production could not be started at Farakka owing to water shortage,” Pandey said. The state receives around 423MW from the four plants at Farakka.

Energy minister Bijendra Prasad Yadav, who is out of town, told The Telegraph: “I spoke to NTPC officials yesterday. They assured me of improvement in power supply. But the real problem lies with the two units at Farakka that need to be dealt with urgently. I will take up the matter with Union power minister Sushil Kumar Shinde.”

The power generation had stopped at two units of Farakka owing to inadequate water-level at Farakka barrage, said the minister, adding that two gates of the barrage have been damaged leading to flow of water into Bangladesh.

“We are just in February and two units of Farakka have stopped generation owing to lack of water. What will happen after March 15 when water is released to Bangladesh according to the India-Bangladesh Ganga Water Treaty. This (flow of water towards Bangladesh) needs to be urgently checked after getting the two barrage gates repaired,” Yadav said, adding that he had spoken to the water resources ministry officials to resolve the matter.

The state requires a power supply of 2,500-3,000MW, whereas the state generally gets a maximum of around 1,300-1,400MW against the central sector allocation of 1,722MW but for the past month, power supply has been badly hit. The supply from the central sector has been hovering between 600MW and 900MW except on a few occasions when supply crossed 1,000MW.

Sanjay Kumar, a resident of Indrapuri, said: “Summer has not arrived but the power problem yesterday and today has raised doubts over the board’s claim of better power supply.”