New Delhi: Ahead of the festival season, the coal supply crisis seems to be deepening as 64 non-pithead power plants are left with less than four days of the dry fuel stocks. The latest report on coal stocks for power plants from the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) also showed that 25 such power plants had coal stocks for less than seven days as on October 3.
The CEA monitors coal stocks at 135 power plants that have a cumulative generation capacity of 165 GW on a daily basis. The daily coal requirement of the 135 power plants with 165 GW of installed capacity is 18,24,100 tonne. Among the 135 plants, not even a single one had eight or more days of coal stocks.
Overall, total coal stocks of 78,09,200 tonne were available at the 135 plants as on October 3 and that was sufficient for four days.
According to the report, there were seven non-pithead plants (where the coal mine is more than 1,500 kilometres away) which had less than five days of coal (super critical) while one such plant had less than nine days of stocks of dry fuel (critical).
Among the pithead power plants, three had less than three days of coal (supercritical) while seven had less than five days of stocks of dry fuel (critical).
Also read: India faces power crisis as coal supplies dwindle
The report also showed that 17 plants – with cumulative installed power generation capacity of 21,325 MW – had zero coal stocks while 20 power plants of 22,550 MW capacity had one day of the dry fuel left. A total of 20 power plants with a total generation capacity of 29,960 MW had two days of coal stocks while 19 of them, with total generation capacity of 22,000 MW, had three days of the dry fuel stocks, as per the report.
The report showed that there were 15 power plants, with cumulative generation capacity of 16,890 MW, which had four days of coal stocks. Six power plants, having 7,174 MW generation capacity had dry fuel stocks for five days.
Nine power plants with 9,360 MW total generation capacity had coal stocks for six days while one power plant of 2,270 MW generation capacity had dry fuel stocks for seven days.
Power Minister R K Singh had reportedly termed the coal shortage as way beyond normal. Singh however, also said that the coal shortage has not led to a power crisis yet. He asserted there is no need for rationing at present. He insisted that the production will be able to meet the demand over the next few days. Acknowledging that there have been some issues in transportation which a government committee is looking into, the minister said India’s demand for power has seen a substantial jump which is a good thing but this has created a huge demand for coal.
“It is not a power crisis. We are meeting the entire demand of the country and the demand is increasing. Yesterday (Monday), the demand was about 15,000 megawatts more than the corresponding day in the previous year… that’s good news,” Singh informed.
“The coal supply is something which we have to monitor. It’s an ongoing process because coal is patched from the mines every day. We are monitoring that on a day-to-day basis. We have a group under Secretary Power which has members from the Ministry of Coal as well as the railways et cetera. So, we are meeting whatever demand is there,” added the minister.