Thermal Plants Coal Stock Back To Normal Levels: Report

Days after several states reported depleting coal supplies at power stations leading to a crisis-like situation, the government has stated that dry fuel stock situation at thermal projects has improved.

According to the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) data, the number of projects having less than four days of coal has come down to 58 as on October 18 compared to 69 from a week ago.

Earlier this month, more than six states including Gujarat and Punjab had told the Centre that several of their power plants were left with just four days of coal, which could lead to outages.

This had forced the government to take stock of supplies and availability of dry fuel with State-owned Coal India Limited, which is also the largest producer and supplier of the commodity in the country.

While Coal Ministry said that though there has been record production of dry fuel in the current fiscal, prolonged monsoon has hit supplies to plants, Power Minister R K Singh had dismissed all talk of any kind of a power crisis in the country, stating that there were enough reserves of coal with power plants.

Since the past two weeks, the government has been regularly taking stock of coal production and its supplies to power plants and in continuation with the practice, on Monday CEA said that the number of non-pit head projects having less than four days of coal was 58 on October 18 compared to 69 on October 11.

The data showed that the number of plants with supercritical stock was 61 on October 17, which means that the coal stock situation was getting normal.

CEA monitors coal stock situation of 135 thermal power plants with cumulative generation capacity of over 165 gega watt.

It also showed that the number of power plants with zero days of coal has come down to 13 as on October 18 with cumulative installed generation capacity of 11,710 MW, compared to 15 with 15,290 MW capacity a week back.

The number of the plants with one day of coal stock has increased to 28 with 34,795 MW capacity as on October 18, compared to 27 with 35,360 MW capacity on October 11, the data showed.