Telangana seeks power from AP Gas plants

Hyderabad: The State government is hoping against hope to get about 1,000 MW of power from the gas-based power production companies located in Andhra Pradesh this summer to tide over the inevitable power crisis.

It has written to the Centre to give Regasified Liquified Natural Gas (RLNG) meant for industries to the gas-based power production companies or Independent Power Production Stations (IPPS) so that TS could get power from them as per the power purchase agreements (PPAs) already inked.

According to sources, Chief Minister K Chandrasekhara Rao has followed it up and requested the Union Energy Ministry to allow the IPPS to get gas during his recent visit to Delhi. The erstwhile AP Genco has entered into PPAs the eight gas-based poer production companies or IPPS located in the residual AP.

As per the bifurcation act, Telangana should get 53 per cent of the power produced by them. Energy department officials said that the independent power producers were liable to give power to Telangana as per the bifurcation act.

In a recent letter to the Union Energy Department, the TS government drew attention to this fact. The combined installed cap acity of these companies is 2,769 MW. A few of these companies are producing about 1271 MW power and TS ought to get about 600 MW from them.

If the other companies also give gas, the availability could go up to 1,000 MW. In the letter, the government said that about 10 MMSCMD gas was available from the KG-D.6 well and it was being allocated to fertilizer industries.

The letter said that this could be diverted to the IPPS by swapping the supply of gas to fertilizer industries by GAIL from Dabhol. The government requested to permit the IPPS to procure RLNG from GAIL to extent of 5 MMSCMD for a period of 120 days to get additional generation of 1000 MW.

It said that, keeping in view the transmission corridor constraints and the generation cost with other fuels like Naphtha and HSD being faced by TS, the only viable option available was procurement of RLNG to enable the IPPS to generate more power.

The Energy Department officials have estimated that the demand and supply gap in February would be 26 mu and in March 34 mu. The gap would remain at 32 mu in April also. It said that the old IPPS, Sprectrum, GVK, Lanco and Reliance, were receiving gas and operating at 47 per cent of installed capacity of 1271 MW.