The government has ramped up coal supply to ramp up buffer stock at thermal power stations in anticipation of electricity demand shooting in line with the weatherman’s prediction of an early and hot summer this year.
Latest coal ministry data shows 16 power stations, or 14%, of the 112 coal-fired power plants monitored by the Central Electricity Authority have received fuel supplies in excess of their 100% requirement. Data shows the level of excess supply reaching as high as 200% in one case, while remaining between 104% and 163% for the remaining 13 stations under this group.
There are 28 other power stations, or a quarter of the monitored plants, that are getting supplies well in excess of their ‘trigger level’ – which ranges between 75% and 90% – of the annual contracted quantity of coal tied up from state-run Coal India Ltd.
The push for increased coal supply is aimed at avoiding a repeat of last year’s situation when coal demand spiked as thermal plants raised output to bridge shortfall in generation from hydel, wind and nuclear sources.
In the August-September period of 2017, nuclear generation fell 36%, wind 14% and hydel 12%. Supplies from Bhutan also dropped. This supply gap was met by coal-fired plants, which saw generation rising by 17% as plants spun at 58% of capacity against 52% in August 2016.
This had led to coal demand rising by 20 million tonnes. Coal India raised despatch by 21% but it still proved inadequate because power demand spiked with rising humidity and a prolonged dry spell.
Since then, the coal and railways minister Piyush Goyal has initiated several steps to ensure adequate coal stocks at power stations, some of which are still operating with low fuel stocks due to various reasons. Coal India is despatching 8% more coal than it did a year ago, loading 308-310 rakes per day to wheel 1.8 million tonnes (mt) of the fuel daily. Coal India’s production has also gone up to 2 million tonne a day and is set to increase further to 2.5 mt in the remaining days of March.
