The Hindu Business Line : Mills body urges TNEB to ensure normality in supply

Coimbatore, March 2 The Southern India Mills Association (SIMA), Coimbatore, has asked the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board (TNEB) to consider the proposal of harvesting power from the captive power generation units of the textile mills and other industries in Tamil Nadu to meet the demand-supply gap.

It has also appealed to the Government to initiate measures to bring normal power supply position at the earliest since the power holiday proposed by the Government would lead to a huge loss of production and job losses.

In a statement here, Dr K.V. Srinivasan, Chairman, SIMA, described the power holiday announced by the government as ‘a step in the right direction’ to manage the power crisis in the State.

He said the industry was ready to join hands with the Government in managing the crisis ‘provided the Government ensures proper management of power supply without any interruptions on the remaining six days’.

He wanted TNEB to reduce the demand charges proportionately for the power holiday and extend banking facility beyond March 31 for wind power and enable the mills to exhaust their units fully during the next year and avoid any lapse in the wind power generated.

Referring to the division of the State into six regions for observing weekly holidays, he said any unscheduled power tripping even for a minute would hit the production for more than 25 minutes, apart from causing damage to expensive components.

The power holiday would lead to around 20 per cent production loss and loss of jobs to the same extent. Hence, he urged the Government to take steps to bring normality in power availability at the earliest in view of the severe recession faced by the industry.

Dr Srinivasan recalled the proposal made by SIMA to the Government earlier on using the idle capacity of furnace oil-based captive power plants owned by the textile mills that has not materialised because of ‘impractical methods and technical issues’ suggested by the TNEB.

He said around 25 textile mills in the State had captive power plants that could generate about 100 MW of power and an equal capacity was available with other industries and he wanted the TNEB to harvest this power. This would help the board partially meet the power shortage not only now but in the future too till TNEB could fully meet the demand.

He said that ‘considering the abnormal tariff’ paid by TNEB for purchasing power under the MoU route, the demand made by the textile mills to (government to) ‘bear the variable cost for running the furnace oil-based generators is very minimal’.

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