Last Week in Power... the Tamil Nadu scene

An active week went by ushering in a number of changes in the market place. Global economic measures hurt businesses in India to a great degree.

Yuan devaluation by over 6% last week hit the already declining Indian Steel, Textile, auto-ancillary industries further. China is one of the major buyers of Cotton, copper and chemicals from India. All of these are badly hit.

No surprise then that the exports have fallen for a straight eighth month, by far the highest at 10.3%. Trade deficit has increased to USD 12.81 billion!

All this meant, the industry and economic scenario is still gloomy and far from the look-up hoped for since the new government came to power last year.

With many industries across the state of Tamil Nadu pulling down their shutters partially or fully, the impetus to growth of infrastructure has been laid bare. Requirement for power has gone down substantially, so much so that hardly any new additions been made for supply of power. Small power stations such as OPG lined up their 180 MW power plant at Gummidipoondi in the last two months. BHEL commissioned its 500 MW unit at Tuticorin Thermal Power Station last month.

TANGEDCO for its part brought in the corridor and the evacuation improvements down south for wind power generators.

Not withstanding the failures at Tuticorin Thermal Power Plant, Mettur Thermal and others, we enjoyed power with negligible interruptions in the last one week. Power in the exchange stood at an RTC price of Rs. 6.44 on an average. While the long term contracts were signed at about Rs. 6.50 spread across 12 months.

Wind continued to dodge the turbines and therefore, overall generation from wind mills. A ten percent decline in wind generation due to low wind is anticipated. The silver lining for wind generators is the commitment from TANGEDCO for near complete evacuation and the accuracy with which the forecasting systems have been operating this year.

Things look rosy for wind generators and very rosy for consumers who are on the way up.