Genco wants money for power not generated

NAGPUR: A shocking fact has come to light in the petition filed by Mahagenco seeking permission to close down five units due to low supply of coal. It wants consumers to pay Rs 1 per unit for the power these units would ?not generate' when they are closed down. Vidarbha Industries Association (VIA) has strongly objected to the proposal and urged MERC to reject the petition.
Mahagenco's application says that this charge will cover its fixed costs regarding the plants and their maintenance while they are not operational. The plant load factor (PLF) target set by Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission (MERC) would be used to decide how many units these plants would have generated. Consumers will pay crores for such imaginary units if Mahagenco's demand is accepted.
Mahagenco wants to close down the units ? it claims temporarily ? due to coal shortage. It will use the coal supplied to generate power at other units so that their generation increases. The total capacity that will be knocked off is 1,040MW.
VIA has charged that the coal shortage is due to coal handlers, who did not ensure that Mahagenco got the contracted quantity of coal. They also did not ensure that the company got good quality coal. In spite of this, Mahagenco did not take any action against them.
RB Goenka, who made the submission on behalf of VIA, said that this forced Mahagenco to import costly coal. He claimed that shortage of coal had imposed a burden of Rs 11,600 crore on consumers, which they paid through higher tariff.
VIA has also demanded an enquiry against the Adani Group, alleging that it was being favoured by MSEDCL and Mahagenco. According to Goenka, Adani was unable to begin production from Machchhakatta coal mine in Odisha even after five to six years. This mine had been allocated to Mahagenco and GSEB. This has contributed a lot to shortage but no action has been taken against Adani.
He further said that Adani was the biggest supplier of imported coal to Mahagenco and supplied coal to generate around 2,000MW to MSEDCL.
A senior Adani official said that the joint venture of Mahagenco and GSEB had not handed over the land to the company and hence it could not begin production. Land acquisition was not Adani's job. As for purchase of imported coal and sale of power to MSEDCL, Adani had bagged these contracts through transparent bidding process, he said.