The grid breakdowns, which had plunged 20 states into darkness earlier this week left the KSEB’s pocket lighter and also forced the power utility to plunder its hydel reserves.
Power supply in the state was back to normal on Thursday, the KSEB officials said, but the grid trips left the KSEB poorer by crores.
According to the KSEB member (finance) S Venugopal, the KSEB has had to spend Rs 4.75 crore daily on power purchases from NTPC’s Rajiv Gandhi combined cycle power project, Kayamkulam, to make up for the abrupt dip in central supply.
The KSEB had already been buying expensive Kayamkulam power at over Rs 9 per unit because of the weak monsoons.
Purchases had to be doubled since Tuesday after the collapse of the north, east, and north-east electricity grids left supply from the central generation stations in tatters. The power utility had also imposed cyclic loadshedding on two days to compensate the shortage from the central stations.
“If the monsoon had been a normal one, we would not have had to schedule the costly Kayamkulam which comes at Rs 9.8 per unit now. And after the grids broke down, we had to double the procurement from there,” Venugopal said.
The KSEB’s hydel reserves also took a beating owing to the grid collapse. On Wednesday, the share of hydro-electricity in the daily supply stood at 21.99 million units - the highest share in recent months, and 42.3 per cent of the total power supplied on the day.
On Tuesday, the hydel generation stood at 19.41 million units.
The KSEB had originally planned to keep hydel generation to around nine million units a day throughout this month, but the weak rains and unsympathetic power consumption had forced it to up it to 15-17 million units.
The grid crisis had made the KSEB ramp up hydel generation further on Monday and Tuesday.
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