Coal stocks continued to shrink with power demand across the country hitting a peak of well above the 200 GW mark this week. Thermal power plants across the country have coal stocks to last just 7.5 days, showed data from the Central Electricity Authority (CEA).
Analysts said the decline in stocks comes on the back of a number factors, including rising demand, supply constraints and logistical issues. On 10 October, the peak power demand reached 221.62 GW, with the peak shortage at 5.36 GW.
Generation outage—or unoperational power generation capacity—stood at 43.754 GW.
On the supply side, the gap in daily receipt of coal by plants stood at 296,000 tonnes on 10 October, with supplies of nearly 2.1 million tonnes and consumption of nearly 2.4 million tonnes. The gap was filled from reserve stocks and imported coal.
So far this month, the average gap in daily supplies has stood at 377,000 tonnes, against 287,000 tonnes in September. Experts suggest that recent heavy rains in eastern India have impacted production and supplies.
The India Meteorological Department in its weather forecast for 5-18 October said that formation and movement of twin-low pressure systems —one over the West coast from the Arabian Sea and the other over the East coast from the Bay of Bengal—have caused heavy to very heavy rainfall over the West coast as well as over East-central and adjoining parts of eastern and northeastern India.
About 84 out of the 188 plants under the ambit of CEA are running on critical stock levels or less than 25% of required stocks.
Along with impacting production, rains also dampen stocked coal, turning it less efficient and further impacting power generation.
Production is usually expected to pick up with the withdrawal of the southwest monsoons.
Amid supply and logistical concerns, government is gearing up to meet the rising demand. Secretary to the union coal secretary, Amrit Lal Meena, on Wednesday met Jaya Verma Sinha, chairperson, Railway Board to discuss about issues relating to better rail-coal coordination for enhanced supply of coal to power plants.
The highest peak power demand this year stands at 239.9 GW, which was recorded on 1 September. The projection for the peak demand this year was 230 GW. Although, the new high is unlikely to be breached, the demand this month has so far been elevated and may remain so with festive demand growing.
The centre last month mandated domestic coal-based power plants to blend 4% imported coal till March next year. In January, power generation companies were asked to blend 6% imported coal till September. The ministry said the gap between consumption and supply at domestic coal-based plants was about 200,000 tonnes per day.
Further, the union ministry of power last month also directed imported coal-based (ICB) power plants to operate at full capacity till the end of October. The original directive on this was issued in February when ICB plants were asked to run at full capacity till 15 June, which was later extended till September.
With the mandate for ICB plants to run at full capacity ending last month, three out of the seven ICB plants have nearly run out of stock.
