Coal news and updates

Coal stocks at India’s power plants near 39 mt

Coal stocks at about 100 thermal power plants (TPS) monitored by the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) neared 39 million tons (mt) as of March 28, 2016, consequently, going up week-on-week (w-o-w), month-on-month (m-o-m) and year-on-year (y-o-y).

According to a CEA report, coal stocks at 100 TPS stood at 38.831 mt as of March 28, 2016, up 1.73% w-o-w from 38.169 mt as of March 21, 2016 and up 7.21% m-o-m from 36.218 mt as of February 28, 2016.

The inventory as on March 28, 2016 was up 51.11% y-o-y from 25.698 mt as of March 29, 2015.

There has been a continuous improvement in the coal stocks positions 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.

Of the total, domestic coal stocks at the TPS stood at 36.391 mt as of March 28, 2016, up 1.76% w-o-w from 35.761 mt as of March 21, 2016, up 7.75% m-o-m from 33.773 mt as of February 28, 2016 and up 57.93% y-o-y from 23.042 mt as of March 29, 2015.

However, imported coal stocks at the TPS stood at 2.440 mt as of March 28, 2016, up 1.33% w-o-w from 2.408 mt as of March 21, 2016, but down 0.20% m-o-m from 2.445 mt as of February 28, 2016 and down 8.13% y-o-y from 2.656 mt as of March 29, 2015.

A year back, as of March 29, 2015, the number of plants facing critical coal stocks position of less than seven days was 12 and the number of plants facing critical coal stocks position of less than four days was 3.

In terms of days, stocks of coal on March 28, 2016,  March 21, 2016, February 28, 2016 and on March 29, 2015 were sufficient to run all the plants for 27, 27, 24 and 18 days respectively.

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