Bihar will take electricity from Kahalgaon and Farakka, NTPC will give 159 MW from three surrendered units.

Patna. Bihar will take 159 MW electricity from the three surrendered production units of Farakka and Kahalgaon in the state. On the orders of the Eastern Region Power Committee (ERPC) of the Energy Ministry, the Bihar Electricity Regulatory Commission has approved the purchase of power companies. This electricity from the above projects will be available at a rate already approved by CERC (Central Electricity Regulatory Commission). The bench of Bihar Electricity Regulatory Commission, Member (Technical) Arun Kumar Sinha and Member (Law) PS Yadav, while giving its decision on the petition of the power companies related to it, said that the petitioners have to get 107.751 MW from Farakka’s Stage One and Stage Two units and NTPC’s 51.520 MW will be made available 24 hours from Kahalgaon unit.

Electricity was surrendered only a month ago

In fact, just a month ago, the power company had surrendered about 850 MW of electricity from two units of Farakka and one unit of Kahalgaon. Regarding this, the company had argued that these three units were quite old. In return, they have ample amount of cheap electricity available. But, the organization controlling the electricity supply of the eastern states of the country has again made available to Bihar 159 MW of the surrendered electricity which was not allocated to any other state. The reason behind this is the agreement between NTPC and Bihar Government, in which the surrendered unallocated power has to be used only by the concerned state.

Not enough electricity available from both the units of Barauni

In the petition, the power supply companies have stated that the two units of 110-110 MW built in Barauni Stage One are supplying a very negligible percentage (about five percent) of the contracted quantity for the last 14 months. There is no possibility of improvement in this situation in the future, due to which there is a shortage of about 200 MW of electricity on a round-the-clock basis throughout the year. Power companies have said that permission to purchase 159 MW power from Barauni Thermal Power Station can help in reducing the above mentioned shortfall of about 200 MW to a great extent.