Team News Riveting
New Delhi, May 12
In view of the pan India impact of the second wave of coronavirus pandemic across the country and the manifold rise in oxygen demand for both medical facilities and for home treatment of patients, the Ministry of Power has undertaken a number of proactive preventive and remedial measures to ensure that there is uninterrupted power supply to Oxygen Plants by the State Utilities.
The Ministry of Power is monitoring the power supply to 73 major identified Oxygen Plants across the country out of which 13 Oxygen Plants supply oxygen to the NCR region. The position of power supplies to all such plants is reviewed every day at the level of Secretary, Ministry of Power, along with the Energy Secretaries of the States, CMD of POSOCO on a case-by-case basis.
All issues related to 24×7 power supply to oxygen plants are discussed threadbare during the daily reviews and interventions are planned and executed in a time bound manner through the State Discoms aided by POSOCO and Central Electricity Authority.
As a part of corrective action strategy, a 24 hours oxygen plant control room (OPCR) and an Internal Control Group (ICG) has been set up at REC Limited which are tasked with maintaining liaison with the Oxygen plan nodal officers for ensuring 24X7 Power supply to these plants; and to ensure that interruptions, if any, are addressed on an immediate basis both on the DISCOM side as well as on the Plant’s Electrical installation side. Disruptions, if any, in Power Supply are analysed by Power System Operation Corporation (POSOCO) together with various utilities in the states (STU & DISCOM), SLDCs and POWERGRID, and specific preventive advisories are issued.
As a part of preventive action, advisories have been issued to the States for best practices adoption to all electricity lines feeding the plants. This includes building of suitable redundancies, and isolation of feeders supplying electricity to the oxygen plants. Some of the corrective measures advised included resetting of relays at the Barotiwala plant (Himachal Pradesh) and Kerala Mineral & Metal plant (Kerala); and, laying of a 132kV underground cable for the oxygen plant at Salequi (Uttarakhand) in the stretch prone to bird fault.
