Nagpur: Load shedding is back to plunge Nagpur in dark yet again, 8 years after the city was declared load shedding free. Thanks to the acute coal shortage and deficient rainfull this year, the city will suffer power cuts depending on power shortage during a particular day. Load-shedding will continue until coal supply to power plants normalizes.
Load-shedding will be implemented 11 KV feeder-wise. There are five category of feeders in the city depending on the distribution losses — A, B, C, D and E with A being the lowest loss feeder and E the highest. As per load-shedding protocol of Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission (MERC) and MSEDCL’s practice, power cuts will be first enforced in high loss areas.
This means that those supplied by category D and E feeders will face load-shedding when power shortage is on the lower side while all categories will face it when the shortage increases. The duration of power cuts is also more in high loss feeders. If power shortage reaches 4,000MW then category A feeders will face 3.15 hours load-shedding, B — 4 hours, C — 4.45 hours, D — 5.30 hours and E — 6.15 hours. The duration of power cuts will proportionately reduce if power shortage is less.
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There are 81 feeders in MSEDCL area in the city. Three feeders are in B category while 78 are in A category. In the franchisee area, there are 249 feeders of which 205 are in A category, 27 in B, eight each in C and D and one in E. For a common man it is difficult to know the category of feeder that supplies power to home.
The power shortage is currently in the range of 1,500MW. The peak load on October 5 was 17,900MW while availability was 16,550MW leading to a load-shedding of 1,350MW. As per MSEDCL officials, the total installed capacity of plants that supply power to the discom is 29,200MW. However, at 11am on October 5 these plants were generating only 16,550MW.
Mahagenco, the main power supplier of MSEDCL, was generating only 5,000MW against 11,000MW thermal capacity. Most plants are having low coal stock. Nashik and Paras plants have only two days’ stock, Bhusawal three and Chandrapur and Parli five. A thermal power plant should have at least seven days stock for generating at full capacity continuously.
The situation in private plants is no better. RattanIndia’s Amravati plant has only two days’ stock while Adani’s Tiroda plant has only a day’s supply. The former’s generation was 500MW against 1,200MW installed capacity while the latter was generating only 1,700MW against 3,300MW capacity.
