Amid supply crunch, govt reworks coal allocation plan

NEW DELHI: Summers have just begun and India is already staring at yet another coal crisis as power demand continues to soar with the country recording a peak demand of 197,283 MW on Thursday.

While Thursday’s demand was not even the highest the country has ever seen, at least 3,000 MW of power demand could not be met on the same day, primarily owing to plants either being shut or running below their installed capacity due to coal shortage.

Taking note of the imminent crisis, the power ministry on Friday changed the methodology of how coal allocated to states could be used by private independent power generating stations (IPPS). It also tweaked the timeline of the bidding process, in an attempt to ease coal availability at power plants. On Wednesday, the power demand that remained unmet was as high as 7,681 MW.

States such as Andhra Pradesh,

Maharashtra, Gujarat, Punjab, Jharkhand, and Haryana have already started raising alarm over low coal stocks which could lead to electricity outages.

“In line with various measures being taken in view of increasing power demand, the power ministry has amended the methodology for use of coal (allocated to states) by IPPS. Larger visibility has been given to the power plants by extending the period of supply of coal from 1 year to 3 years. The Ministry has further made amendments in the timeline of the bidding process which has been reduced from 67 days to 37 days. The measures have been taken for ensuring more efficient utilisation of domestic coal,” said a statement issued by the power ministry on Friday evening.

Data from the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) showed that as on Thursday (April 21), as many as 89 of 150 power plants running on domestic coal had critically low coal levels. The reasons cited in the remarks stated it was mostly due to low supply from Coal India Limited and lack of rakes to transport them.

“The Government has taken these measures in order to optimally utilise the railway infrastructure for maximum transportation of coal to the power plants. The ministry said that this would enable States to optimally utilize their linkage coal in the plants nearer to the mines as it would be easier to transmit electricity instead of coal transport to far off States,” the ministry further stated.