Ukai power plant to buy coal from Western Coalfields

VADODARA: The Gujarat Electricity Board-owned 850 mw coal-based thermal power plant at Ukai would soon start procuring coal from Nagpur-based Western Coalfields Ltd (WCL), said GEB official G Mohapatra.
GEB has agreed to consider several demands raised by the Railways for the transportation of coal. For reasons best known to the Railways, the transportation of coal from WCL to the Ukai thermal power station was discontinued for many years now.This put an additional burden of Rs 100 crore annually on the GEB, he said.
WCL is located 700 kms away from Ukai, while other coalfields from where GEB procures coal are based more then 1,300 kms away, for which transportation costs are very high.
Initially, GEB will receive 50,000 metric tonnes of coal a month from WCL. GEB will take up the issue of increasing this quota at the quarterly coal linkage committee meeting later, Mohapatra said.
The state power and energy ministry, too, has started pressurising the railway ministry to concede to the long-standing demands to rationalise the freight policy on indigenous coal and the duty structure on imported coal. If approved, it is expected to cut the cost of power generation by 40 paise to 60 paise per kwh, he said.
About 90 per cent of the total power generated in Gujarat is coal-based and the poor quality of coal from various coalfields in the country has been severely affecting output. This, coupled with high freight charges, leads to the high cost of generation of power in the state.
The fuel cost per unit of GEB is high due to several reasons.
Compared to Maharashtra State Electricity Board and Madhya Pradesh Electricity Board, the transportation cost of coal for GEB is very high due to the long distance (average 1,300 kms) of the collieries from which it procures coal. GEB presently procures coal from south India. And GEB pays Rs 740 crore and Rs 959 crore more than the Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh SEBs, respectively, for the same quantity of coal transported from there.
The present monthly coal requirement of GEB (10.55 lakh metric tonne) comprises 68.7 per cent linkage of poor quality coal (low heat value and high ash percentage) from mainline fields and 31.3 per cent linkage of good quality coal from Korea''s Rewa coalfields. Instead, GEB wants the continuance of the earlier monthly quota of 50 per cent from mainline fields and the rest 50 per cent from the Korean coalfields. The cost of fuel per unit of mainline coal and Korean Rewa coal are Rs 1.32 and Rs 1.02, respectively.
And the burden per annum on GEB due to the higher poor quality coal linkage proportion works out to about Rs 90 crore, said GEB sources.