With the power demand touching an all-time high in April and is seen to be high in May-June, Union power minister RK Singh has asked stakeholders of the stressed power plants to take immediate steps to operate the idle capacities.

As part of the efforts to revive the stressed units, the minister met stakeholders of such power plants in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Chattisgarh on Monday. These units have a combined idle capacity of close to 10,000 megawatt (MW).

Companies such as Tata Power, Adani Power, Essar Power and RattanIndia among others attended the meeting along with their lenders and the state discoms.

The imported coal-based power plants in Gujarat also have not been operating at their full capacity, especially, Tata Power’s 4,000 MW plant in Mundra and Essar Power’s 1,200 MW power plant in Salaya as the procurer states did not agree to compensatory tariffs after these plants became unviable after Indonesia benchmarked coal to the global index.

If these capacities come into operation, the majority of shortage issues could be resolved in Punjab and Haryana – which are facing severe power shortages.

Similarly, RattanIndia’s 1,350 MW power plant in Sinnar, near Nashik in Maharashtra is lying idle for four years. “It was suggested in the meeting if the lenders led by PFC can provide the working capital loan, then the (RattanIndia) plant can be made operational,” said Dinesh Waghmare, energy secretary of Maharashtra.

When contacted a senior RattanIndia official said, these plants can be revived on a sustainable basis if a medium to long-term PPA can be secured through the reverse auction of stranded capacity where the discoms submit bids and the fuel cost is a pass-through.

RattanIndia is in talks with lenders to recast its Rs 7,000 crore debt. The company is also in talks with Maharashtra Generation Company (Mahagenco) and a few other “marquee” investors for equity participation in the asset. The firm was looking for Rs 500 crore of working capital and Rs 200 crore of bank guarantee from its existing set of lenders to start the Nashik plant and sign the power purchase agreement with Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company (MSEDCL).

Ashok Khurana, director-general of the Association of Power Producers, said: “All the idle capacities should be restarted. The growing demand and rising GST collection is an indicators of higher economic activity. It is only going to go up. If we have the capacities where the investments have been as high as Rs 7-8 crore per MW, they should be utilised instead of going for fresh investments.”

Around 3,041 MW of imported coal-based capacity remained shut last weekend, of the total installed ICB capacity of 20,296 MW. The average plant load factor of even the operational ICBs is around 25% now, according to the CEA data.

The power load factor (PLF) of the total installed thermal capacity of 203,347 MW as of April 30 was 66.7%.