Coal news and updates

Coal stock shrinks with rising demand

NEW DELHI : Coal stocks continued to shrink with power demand across the country hitting a peak of well above the 200 GW mark this week. Thermal power plants across the country have coal stocks to last just 7.5 days, showed data from the Central Electricity Authority (CEA).

Analysts said the decline in stocks comes on the back of a number factors, including rising demand, supply constraints and logistical issues. On 10 October, the peak power demand reached 221.62 GW, with the peak shortage at 5.36 GW.

Generation outage—or unoperational power generation capacity—stood at 43.754 GW.

On the supply side, the gap in daily receipt of coal by plants stood at 296,000 tonnes on 10 October, with supplies of nearly 2.1 million tonnes and consumption of nearly 2.4 million tonnes. The gap was filled from reserve stocks and imported coal.

So far this month, the average gap in daily supplies has stood at 377,000 tonnes, against 287,000 tonnes in September. Experts suggest that recent heavy rains in eastern India have impacted production and supplies.

The India Meteorological Department in its weather forecast for 5-18 October said that formation and movement of twin-low pressure systems —one over the West coast from the Arabian Sea and the other over the East coast from the Bay of Bengal—have caused heavy to very heavy rainfall over the West coast as well as over East-central and adjoining parts of eastern and northeastern India.

About 84 out of the 188 plants under the ambit of CEA are running on critical stock levels or less than 25% of required stocks.

Along with impacting production, rains also dampen stocked coal, turning it less efficient and further impacting power generation.