Coal news and updates

Coal stocks at India’s power plants at 36.18 mt

Coal stocks at about 100 thermal power plants (TPS) monitored by the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) has sustained the ascending trend and touched a high of 36.18 million tons (mt) as of February 24, 2016, up week-on-week (w-o-w), month-on-month (m-o-m) and year-on-year (y-o-y).

There has been a continuous improvement in the coal stocks position at power plants since the beginning of January 2015 and the situation is such that since December 2015, not a single plant has been facing a super-critical coal stocks scenario of less than 7 days or critical coal stocks position of less than 4 days.

According to the CEA report, coal stocks at 100 TPS stood at 36.181 mt as of February 24, 2016, up 0.45% w-o-w from 36.018 mt as of February 17, 2016 and up 6.21% m-o-m from 34.067 mt as of January 24, 2016.

The inventory as on February 24, 2016 was up 83.69% y-o-y from 19.697 mt as of February 24, 2015.

Similarly, domestic coal stocks at the TPS stood at 33.665 mt as of February 24, 2016, up 0.34% w-o-w from 33.552 mt as of February 17, 2016, up 5.43% m-o-m from 31.932 mt as of January 24, 2016 and up 94.38% y-o-y from 17.319 mt as of February 24, 2015.

Likewise, imported coal stocks at the TPS stood at 2.515 mt as of February 24, 2016, up 1.99% w-o-w from 2.466 mt as of February 17, 2016, up 17.80% m-o-m from 2.135 mt as of January 24, 2016 and up 5.76% y-o-y from 2.378 mt as of February 24, 2015.

A year back, as of February 24, 2015, the number of plants facing critical coal stocks position of less than seven days was 23 and the number of plants facing critical coal stocks position of less than four days was 10.

In terms of days, stocks of coal on February 24, 2016, February 17, 2016, January 24, 2016 and on February 24, 2015 were sufficient to run all the plants for 24, 24, 25 and 12 days respectively.

Following table shows coal stocks position at power plants on various days: