Rajasthan to soon have a 2000 Megawatt (MW) solar park, new power plants to be established in Chhabra and Kalisindh informed the Chairman and Managing Director of Rajasthan Vidyut Utpadan Nigam here on Saturday.
Rajasthan has been facing an acute power crisis due to the scarcity of coal in the state. Now the Rajasthan Vidyut Utpadan Nigam is working towards setting up a lignite-based power plant. By issuing an order, the government extended Rajasthan Vidyut Utpadan Nigam chairman and managing director RK Sharma’s tenure by one year. Sharma said that his priority would be to work faster in the direction of setting up a 2000 MW solar park as well as new power plants in Chhabra of Baran district of Rajasthan and near the Kalisindh river.
Talking to ANI, he said, “Out of the 2000 MW solar park that the state government had earlier decided to set up, Rajasthan Vidyut Utpadan Nigam has to set up an 810 MW solar park and work is going on fast for that.”Similarly, 600-600 MW ultra-solar critical plants will be set up in Chhabra. The same 800-megawatt ultra-solar power plant is also to be set up in Kalisindh of the Jhalawar region. Similarly, land acquisition work is going on for setting up a lignite-based power plant in Ghoda.
CMD of Production Corporation RK Sharma said that Rajasthan had to face the problem of electricity amid the coal crisis in the past. In such a situation, our focus is that there is abundant lignite in Rajasthan. In such a situation, if lignite-based power plants are installed in Rajasthan, there will be no problem regarding production in the power plant. He said that the production corporation is working in this direction on priority. In December last year, the Minister of Power in Rajasthan, Bhanwar Singh Bhati said that the state is not able to obtain coal as per the requirement.
Addressing a session with the Congress party, The Congress leader said, “Rajasthan is not able to get coal as per its requirement, because of which the issue of power cuts is happening in the state.”
He further said that the quality of coal from Odisha is not up to the mark.
“The coal that we get from Odisha, is not just too remote but is also not good in quality. Also, we are not able to do coal mining because of public outrage in Chhattisgarh. So, we are tempted to use the coal from Odisha,” he added.
Source: PTI
