Coal shortage led to power generation loss in FY18
Acknowledging that coal shortage hit power generation in the current year and that coal supply still was a sore point, the power ministry has said the sector would need 615 million tonnes of coal in the coming financial year.
This would also entail an increased demand of 288 railway rakes a day.
In an inter-departmental meeting of power, coal, railways, along with NTPC and Coal India, held in January, Power Minister R K Singh said efforts should be made to ensure that there was no shortage of coal during the next monsoon season. “The coal supply situation is still critical as there are 10 power stations with zero coal and around 55 power plants have coal stock of less than seven days,” Singh was quoted as having said in the meeting, according to the minutes. “Coal companies and the railways should improve coal supply to power stations so that they have sufficient stocks to meet their requirements and can build up their stocks to normative level, and (also to ensure) there is no shortage of coal during the next monsoon season — June to September 2018.”
Business Standard has reviewed the minutes of the meeting. To meet the requirements
and to speed up operations, Coal India would now look at loading rakes beyond the stipulated time and aim at round-the-clock operations. “CIL has assured loading a rake within five hours as per existing free loading time from the sidings with loading facility of fewer than four rakes a day. It will load a rake within three hours from the sidings with more than four rakes a day capacity,” said the minutes.
It also quoted power ministry officials as saying coal supply was below normative levels in 2017. “During the current year, there has been a loss of generation due to shortage of coal. The supply of coal during the current year was reviewed and it has been seen that the supply of coal from CIL improved to 217 rakes a day during November-December.
However, there was a dip in January,” an official said, according to the minutes.
The coal deficit started in September last year, touching a low of six days of average coal availability with power units in October. Close to 11,000 Mw of units saw forced outage due to low stocks. In December, it improved slightly to 10 days and now stands at 12 days.
In the meeting, officials said the coal stocks available at 113 power plants monitored on a daily basis by the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) were about 14 million tonnes, against the normative requirement of 30 million tonnes.
It was noted that against a loading plan of 274 rakes the average supply of rakes by CIL was about 259 a day in January.
Based on growth in electricity demand, it was estimated the requirement of domestic coal during 2018-19 would be about 615 million tonnes. Therefore, the number of rakes required per day from CIL to meet this requirement would be 288.
In response to a demand by the power ministry, a representative of the ministry of railways said efforts would be made to enhance the number of rakes. “But power plants should also be asked to build up their coal stocks to the normative
level so that the rakes do not remain idle and the investment in the production of rakes does not go waste,” he said.
In earlier statements, the secretary to the coal ministry had expressed concern that power plants weren’t stocking up on the fuel. Singh, thereby, mandated all stakeholders to frame a policy for coal supply, covering supply, rake availability, allotment and payment to Coal India, among others. Recently, the CEA overhauled the methodology and formula to calculate coal stock availability before declaring a unit as having critical stock situation.