Amid power crisis in Delhi, Satyendar Jain urges Centre to ensure availability of coal

New Delhi [India], April 29 (ANI): Amid the power crisis in the national capital, Delhi Power Minister Satyendar Jain on Friday urged the Centre to ensure the availability of coal by getting the train racks repaired for smoother and timely transportation of coal to the power generating plants.
He further said that the power plants in Delhi cannot function with the coal backup of one day.
Addressing a press conference, Jain told that the country is facing a severe power crisis due to a lack of coal availability, as there is no backup available with power plants for this.
"In normal circumstances, (for smooth supply of energy) coal should be available with the power generating plants as a backup for 21 days. However, today there are many plants in the country that do not have a backup of coal even for a day," Jain said.
Adding further, he said that the current peak for power demand in Delhi is 6,000 MW.
On being asked about arrangements for power supply in hospitals, the power minister said, "We will look at how and where to adjust it, but I would urge the government to get these tracks fixed so that the coal can be transported easily, which is a better solution".
"There is no payment pending from the Delhi government. It can be possible that the states- Haryana and Uttar Pradesh- have not made their payments," he added.
He also mentioned that instead of an increase in the number of train tracks, it has significantly reduced upto 10 per cent. "Earlier there were 450 train racks but now it is 405," he said.
During the conference, he also hinted at the problems Delhi might have to face if power plants shut down due to a lack of coal availability.
Earlier in the morning, the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) Limited in a series of tweets said that Unchahar and Dadri stations have declared more than 100 per cent rated capacity of the grid. It said that except for one unit of the Unchahar power station, all the other units are running at their full capacity.
"Currently #Unchahar and #Dadri stations are declaring more than 100% rated capacity to the grid. All units of Unchahar and Dadri are running at full load except Unchahar Unit#1, which is under annual planned overhaul," the tweet read.
"All the six Units of Dadri and five Units of Unchahar are running at full capacity and receiving regular coal supplies. Present stock is 1,40,000 Metric Tonnes (MT) and 95,000 MT respectively and import coal supplies are also in pipeline," it added. (ANI)