Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: With many coal-fired power plants across India facing fuel shortage, the Centre on Wednesday directed the state-owned Coal India Ltd (CIL) to augment the supplies to power producers to 1.55-1.6 million tonnes (MT) per day around the Durga Puja period, and to further scale it up to 1.7 MT daily after October 20.
Nearly 70 per cent of the country’s power plants are coal-fired.
Several thermal power plants are grappling with fuel crunch in India, the fourth-largest coal producer in the world, because of delayed monsoon rains and increased demand in summer. These factors forced them to use up stocks while fresh arrivals were hindered because of the non-evacuation of coal from water-logged mines and associated logistics problems.
Because of the skyrocketing coal prices in the global markets, at least 14 power plants in India, depending on coal imports, had to scale down their generation. It also compounded the electricity problems in parts of the country when the demand increased after the Covid-19 affected economy rebounded.
This demand-supply gap forced the domestic coal-based thermal power plants to over-produce. This placed an un-factored load of around 10 MT on CIL. Had this not happened, the stocks at power plants would have been around 17-18 MT instead of the meagre 7 MT now, the media reports said.
Amid concerns over electricity problems due to increased demand and bottlenecks in fresh supplies, Union Home Minister Amit Shah held a meeting with Power Minister R. K. Singh and Coal Minister Pralhad Joshi on Monday.
According to media reports, the Centre has asked the CIL to supply 1.55-1.6 MT of coal to the power sector daily around the Puja time. After October 20, the PSU will augment it to 1.7 MT per day. On Monday, CIL dispatched 1.615 MT of coal to the states.
Nearly 80 percent of CIL’s total coal supplies are channelled to the power sector. It had nearly 100 MT of coal stocks in March 2021.
Reports said although the power plants are getting the required coal, increased stocks are not coming to continuously replenish them. With the monsoon season receding at present, coal stocks will start building up from November.
On Monday, CIL had said it scaled up the supplies to power utilities across India to 1.51 million tonnes MT per day during the first four days of October and is building up adequate evacuation logistics to transport the dry fuel.
The average supply to coal-fired power plants during October so far has been 1.43 MT per day, which augmented to 1.51 MT in the past four days. With 40 MT of stocks at pitheads, and increasing, the availability of coal will not be a problem, the reports said.
Despite heavy rainfall, CIL produced about 126 MT of coal during the July-September 2021 period, setting a record high for the second quarter, and posting a 9.6 per cent year-on-year growth. During the first 10 days of October, its output logged 6.5 per cent growth over October 2020.