NEW DELHI: The surge in power demand is seen giving India’s Coal-fired power plants a fresh lease of life as they are expected to operate at 62% of their capacity in the current fiscal, the highest in five years, to fill the gap arising from electricity consumption outpacing thermal capacity addition.
The plant load factor, or the run rate, of coal-fired plants is expected to increase by 300 basis points in the current fiscal, a development that Crisil Ratings on Monday said will benefit a third of the 73 GW (gigawatts) private sector generation capacity the most by improving their credit risk profiles and pushing operating profits to five-year highs.
The agency’s senior director Manish Gupta pegged the annual coal-based capacity addition at 2% in the past five years against annualised demand growth of 3.4%. He expected the capacity addition to be 3.5% (7 GW) this fiscal against 6% demand growth on the back of 7.3% GDP growth estimate.
