India could face as long as six months battling to ensure coal-fired power plants have enough fuel as the nation\u2019s energy crisis escalates.<\/p>\n
More than half the nation\u2019s plants are on alert for outages after surging electricity demand and a slump in local coal output eroded stockpiles. Power stations had an average of four days\u2019 worth of coal at the end of last month, the lowest level in years, and down from 13 days at the start of August.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know whether I will be comfortable in the next five to six, four to five months,\u201d Power Minister Raj Kumar Singh was quoted as telling The Indian Express in an interview published Tuesday. While demand does typically slow with cooler weather from mid-October, \u201cit\u2019s going to be touch and go,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In at least a portion of India\u2019s coal fleet the situation has deteriorated in the past week, according to Singh. Coal plants accounting for between 40 gigawatts to 50 gigawatts of capacity currently have less than three days\u2019 of fuel stocks, he told the newspaper. That compares to a total national coal capacity of about 203 gigawatts.<\/p>\n
Coal accounts for about 70% of India\u2019s electricity generation, and consumption is forecast to rise in the next few years, even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi pushes for a massive increase in renewables. Like neighboring China, India is suffering from the impacts of a sharp surge in electricity demand, a squeeze on domestic mine output and surging prices of seaborne coal.<\/p>\n
Government ministries are working with state-run Coal India Ltd. and NTPC Ltd., India\u2019s largest power generator, to raise output from mines and to ensure demand is met, Singh was quoted as saying.<\/p>\n
Coal supply will be prioritized to utilities that have made regular payments to coal companies, and that have been maintaining mandated levels of fuel stocks, according to the newspaper.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
India could face as long as six months battling to ensure coal-fired power plants have enough fuel as the nation\u2019s energy crisis escalates. More than half the nation\u2019s plants are on alert for outages after surging electricity demand and a slump in local coal output eroded stockpiles. Power stations had an average of four days\u2019 worth of coal at the end of last month, the lowest level in years, and down from 13 days at the start of August. \u201cI don\u2019t know whether I will be comfortable in the next five to six, four to five months,\u201d Power Minister Raj […]<\/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-440404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coal"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440404","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=440404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440404\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}