State-run Coal India Ltd has ramped up supply of coal over the last five days to address a coal shortage at utilities across the country, the federal coal ministry said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Coal-fired power accounts for more than 70 per cent of India’s electricity generation, with state-run Coal India Ltd accounting for more than four-fifths of its total production.<\/p>\n
Government data showed over half of the 135 coal-fired power plants had less than a week’s stock of coal left, of which 50 plants had less than three days of coal left. Six plants had run out of coal, data from the Central Electricity Authority showed.<\/p>\n
“Coal India Limited (CIL) has stepped up its coal supplies vigorously during the last five days of August 2021 consistently clocking 1.7 million tonnes per day,” the coal ministry said.<\/p>\n
That is 4.3 per cent higher than the July average of 1.63 million tonnes a day.<\/p>\n
A shortage of coal has been exacerbated by a steep growth in power demand in India, as states have eased coronavirus-related curbs, while hydro-electricity generation has fallen.<\/p>\n
Federal guidelines recommend utilities have at least two weeks of coal stocks. Only a sixth of thermal power plants had less than a week’s stock at the beginning of the month.<\/p>\n
At the beginning of the financial year in April, Coal India and power plants across the country had record inventory levels.<\/p>\n
Coal shortages occur periodically in India, with the last such shortage occurring in 2017.<\/p>\n
While officials have in the past blamed each other and power producers for not buying adequate coal in advance, power producers say a lack of accountability affects utilities.<\/p>\n
“Coal shortage is a perennial problem as there is no accountability for short supply or non-availability of rakes,” Ashok Khurana, director general of the Association of Power Producers, told Reuters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
State-run Coal India Ltd has ramped up supply of coal over the last five days to address a coal shortage at utilities across the country, the federal coal ministry said on Tuesday. Coal-fired power accounts for more than 70 per cent of India’s electricity generation, with state-run Coal India Ltd accounting for more than four-fifths of its total production. Government data showed over half of the 135 coal-fired power plants had less than a week’s stock of coal left, of which 50 plants had less than three days of coal left. Six plants had run out of coal, data from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[131],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-433492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coal"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433492\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}