The APSEB Assistant Executive Engineers’ Association (AAEEA) has written a letter to Energy Secretary N. Srikant on Thursday requesting him to drop the proposed acquisition of the 2 x 600 MW Athena Chhattisgarh Power Limited (ACPL) by APGenco calling it an unscientific capacity addition that will be a drag on the A.P. power utilities.
AAEEA general secretary N. Lakshmana Rao stated that ACPL has no proper coal linkages and acquiring any power plant outside A.P. without doing a thorough techno-economic feasibility analysis would have disastrous consequences.
ACPL should not be bought just because it was a pit-head station, he said, pointing out that the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) rejected the proposal to buy ACPL as its boilers and other parts were China-made.
Mr. Lakshmana Rao said acquisition of ACPL would push both APGenco and discoms into debts at a time when the State power sector was in doldrums.
He insisted that the forecast deficit baseload of 1,000 MW could be met by operating the existing Thermal Power Plants (TPPs) at higher Plant Load Factor (PLF) instead of backing them down.
Operating the TPPs below 80% PLF or backing down would increase the generation cost besides resulting in a faster wear and tear. Integration of private variable renewable energy into the grid which started in 2015-16 was increasing day by day in an unscientific manner. The landed cost of power generated by ACPL would be far higher than that of the local plants, Mr. Lakshmana Rao added.