Kerala power muddle

The following note was written in Sept, '01 at the instance of an eminent environmentalist and adviser to the Govt of Kerala. Though he did submit it to the government with his forwarding note, the government did nothing about it, and the position in Kerala remains as precarious as before:

Kerala had all along been dependent almost totally on hydel power. This led to serious crisis situations in the state whenever the monsoons failed. To address this, the government, a few years back, decided to promote thermal power generation in a large way. This has resulted in the setting up of close to 650 MW of capacity upto now, as against the hydel capacity of nearly 1500 MW, providing for a fairly healthy balance. This, however, is mostly on paper.

The thermal plants are based almost totally on petroleum products, ie HSD (high speed diesel) and Naphtha, both of which are largely import dependent. With the international prices of these products rising steadily over the past few years, the cost of thermal power generation has also been steadily going up. The KSEB, the state-owned monopoly distribution utility, is however unable to pass on the increased costs to the consumers on account of a number of reasons, including political, and is in turn accumulating losses at a rate that is becoming increasingly unbearable. As a result, the thermal plants are being used mostly to address emergent needs, leading to severe under-utilisation of capacity. Under the circumstances, the government has again been forced to look at increasing the hydel generation capacity, the running cost here being extremely low. But, what the government refuses to take into account is the enormous cost it is subjecting the future generations to, in the process, through submersion of the life-giving rain forests.

Through all this, the government has chosen to remain blind to a third alternative, which addresses all of the state’s problems, and is also very cost effective.

Now, what the state needs is electrical energy at the most competitive price. For that, it is not necessary that it has to be generated within the state, as apparently has been the thinking all this while. India has vast reserves of coal in the states of Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh and Jharkhand, where besides, the burning of these also does not cause serious environmental imbalances. This apart, the problem of fly-ash can also be easily sorted out by pumping it back into the used-up pits. All in all, therefore, the simple thing to do is to mine the coal in these places, burn it and generate the energy also here, and feed it into the grid to be transmitted down south to states like Kerala. The Talcher (Orissa), Korba (Madhya Pradesh) and other super thermal stations of NTPC ( National Thermal Power Corporation) are already doing a fine job of generating power in these places, and the PGCIL (Power Grid Corporation of India Ltd) is presently in the process of putting in place a 1000 MW direct HVDC (High Voltage Direct Current) transmission line upto the centre of South India ( near Kolar in Karnataka) to evacuate the power, from where, it is to be distributed to all the southern states, including Kerala. With the in-built efficiencies in every aspect of this arrangement, this will easily be the cheapest source of thermal power that can be made available in any part of the country. If Kerala wants more power, all it has to do is to tie up with NTPC and PGCIL to enhance their capacities, possibly through a funding arrangement on the lines of the Konkan Railway model. The state can use the power thus imported to take care of the base loads, and use the existing hydel capacity to meet the peak loads

After battling for years together with generating power using coal transported all the way from Talcher, via Chennai and Paradip ports through a rail–barge–rail route, and paying through its nose for it, apart from making the city of Raichur almost unlivable because of fly-ash pollution, the Karnataka government is finally looking at switching to the model described above for all future capacity additions. Karnataka has learnt its lessons the hard way. Kerala does not have to.