Telangana strike hits power flow

BANGALORE: Facing power cuts again? Blame that on the Telangana strike in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh.
Two units of the Ramagundam thermal power station in AP were shut down as they did not receive coal supply from the strike-hit Singareni Collieries Company Ltd, also in AP.
"We are facing power shortage of 1000MW. Hence, we had to resort to load-shedding on Tuesday.There will be at least one hour power cut across different parts of the city," Bescom managing director P Manivannan said. He said the situation would hopefully improve by Wednesday.
But the areas in the eastern and parts of southern Bangalore faced power interruptions due to rain on Monday night. "There was power cut on Monday night. The supply was restored only on Tuesday morning," said Muralidharan R, a resident of Koramangala.
The shortage is not just due to the strike in AP. Two units of Raichur Thermal Power Station (RTPS) have also been shut down. While unit-3 of RTPS was shut for annual maintenance work, RTPS unit-8 has barring gear problem.
The net production from RTPS has come down from 21 mu on September 18 to 17 million units (mu). Besides, even the one unit of Bellary Thermal Power Station has been shut down for maintenance work.
Karnataka Power Corporation (KPC) power generation data shows that only the hydro generation unit is producing 45 mu of energy. The generation from BTPS was stopped on September 3. It would take another 10 days to restore the BTPS unit.