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New UserDelhi govt hopeful to get coal block by October
20 Jul 2015
The Delhi government is hopeful that the Centre will allocate it a coal block by October this year.
Power minister Satyendar Jain said he had a series of meetings with the Centre over the issue and has been assured that the coal block will be allocated at the earliest, following which the government would set up a pithead plant and transmit the power to Delhi.
"The Centre has given us positive indications on allocation of coal block. We don't know where the allocation will be, it could be Orissa, MP or Chhattisgarh, wherever coal is available. We will set up our plant there and transmit the power to Delhi. Transporting coal is costly, but transmission costs are minimal," said Jain.
The power minister further said that a number of gas plants have been set up, but with no gas available, they were pointless.
"We have been asking for gas for the Bawana plant, but it's not available. We have to explore other options,'' he said.
The government said that the power they would produce from their thermal plant would be around Rs 2-3/unit and will enhance the city's internal power generation.
Last week, the government had informed the Centre that they wanted to surrender power purchase agreements (PPAs) of about 2,255MW electricity rationed from eleven central government power plants for Delhi to reduce costs.
The issue caught the attention of the government earlier this year, who agreed to the discom's demand for surrender of costly power. Delhi being a land-locked city with neither coal reserves nor hydel potential is largely dependent upon CPUs as major source of its power supply.
The average power purchase cost of Delhi is high vis-a-vis many states of India resulting in the levy of a higher electricity tariff. The matter of costly power was also discussed with your good self during our meeting on April 28, 2015 and you were kind enough to offer that if Delhi wants to surrender the power allocated from few central sector stations, it will get full cooperation in this regard from central government,'' says the letter from Jain to Piyush Goel.