Coal news and updates

Amid coal shortage, power consumption up 3% in first 15 days of Oct

The country’s power consumption grew 3.35 per cent in the first half of October to 57.22 billion units, showing recovery amid coal shortage at electricity generation plants, as per Power Ministry data.

Last year during October 1-15, power consumption stood at 55.36 BU which was higher than 49.66 BU in the same period in 2019. Amid the coal shortage at power plants, the peak power shortage moderated to 986 MW on October 15 in sharp contrast to 11,626 MW on October 7. It is to be noted that the 11,626 MW peak power shortage on October 7 was the highest during the first half of this month. Earlier this week, the power ministry had stated that the capacity of units under outage due to low coal stocks reduced from 11 GW on October 12 to 5 GW on October 14.