Thane

Navi Mumbai

Mahavitaran

NDA government

Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission

MERC

energy minister Chandrasekhar Bawankule

Mumbai’s eastern suburbs such as Mulund, Bhandup and Kanjur and large parts ofand, which had been spared load-shedding since 2012, experienced power cuts for three hours on Wednesday. The load-shedding is likely to continue as the demand-supply gap has widened.According to officials of the state-owned power distribution utility,, while power demand in Maharashtra is around 16,500 MW, the supply is only 14,000 MW.The Mahavitaran has divided the state into seven zones (A to G), depending upon the percentage of bill recovery and transmission and distribution losses. The areas which fall in A to C category were exempted from load-shedding in 2012.However, a shortage of coal, closure of generation units and increase in demand due to October heat have forced Mahavitaran to go for power cuts. While the state is facing an acute shortage of coal, the Union coal ministry is claiming increased production in the three years ofAccording to the ministry, production has increased by 9.2 crore tonnes since 2014 and the government plans to take it to 100 crore tonnes by 2019-20. The officials of Mahagenco, state’s power generation utility, they are unable to generate enough electricity because of inadequate coal supply. The state is receiving only 20 rakes (goods train) of coal from Coal India Ltd daily against the requirement of 32 rakes.Apart from this, Mahagenco’s plants with combined capacity of nearly 1,700 MW are out of operation due to various technical reasons. Also, inadequate rain in Vidarbha region has led to water shortage in power plants. Bulk of the state’s generation capacity is located in Vidarbha.Mahagenco is generating only 4,500 MW of power against its capacity of 7,000 MW.The shortage of coal has affected the private power generators as well.The Mahavitaran’s application seeking permission to buy power at higher rates was scheduled for hearing on Thursday before the state power regulator). However, consumer organisations are opposing Mahavitaran’s proposal to purchase power at an expensive rate of around Rs 5 per unit. They say that the extra burden of Rs 60 crore on Mahavitaran should not be passed on to consumers as the crisis has arisen purely due to mismanagement.Speaking to Mirror, Pratap Hogade, president of Maharashtra State Power Consumer Association, said, “The consumers are already paying Mahavitaran stand-by charges to the tune of Rs 3,000 crore to ensure that the nearly 5,000 MW capacity is not used because of lack of demand. So if there is an excess capacity available, power should be generated using this excess capacity, instead of buying expensive power.”He said it was ironical that the state was introducing load-shedding now whereas there was no power cut during summers. “When the demand had reached 19,500 MW during summer season, there was no load-shedding but now when the demand has dipped by nearly 3,000 MW, the government is resorting to power cuts. This clearly shows that it’s nothing but mismanagement.”Mirror tried to contact state’sfor comment but text messages and phone calls to him remained unanswered.