The Hindu Business Line : Teaching SEBs how to improve their efficiency

THE country's most efficient thermal power producer, state-owned National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) is now showing the way forward for the less-efficient State electricity board (SEB) stations.

NTPC teams have started work on assisting SEBs to improve efficiency of stations having a plant load factor (PLF) — or capacity utilisation in crude terms — of below 60 per cent, starting with the Tenughat Power Station in Jharkhand which has an abysmally low PLF of 10 per cent.

Around 26 stations are being targeted in the first round, where NTPC teams are involved in the short, medium and the long term schemes with the aim of increasing efficiency by at least 10 per cent, Government officials said.

"Increased efficiency means higher power production. Instead of focussing on setting up fresh capacities, improving the efficiency of existing stations would ensure higher availability of power to tide over the gap between production and demand," a Government official said.

The average PLF of NTPC stations is 85 per cent, while the national average for thermal stations is 74 per cent. "NTPC teams are working with SEB stations having a PLF of less than 60 per cent. Our mandate is to provide the SEB staff with inputs on cutting down technical losses and sprucing up overall generation efficiency. Most of these stations we are involved in have a PLF between 20 per cent and 55 per cent," an NTPC official said.

NTPC teams are being stationed at the SEB facilities and are actively working with the SEB officials in incorporating best practices and also seeing through their implementation, officials said. The teams are working on both coal-based and gas-based stations of various SEBs.

NTPC is the largest power generating company in the country, with an installed capacity of around 22,000 MW, which is around 19 per cent of the country's total installed capacity. Of this, 13 are coal-based power stations while seven are gas-based power stations.

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