Coal news and updates

India stares at outages as coal stocks at power plants hit a low

Local coal-based plants have supplies for just over eight days

18As the country’s peak power demand nears last year’s all-time high of 200 gigawatts (GW), the coal stocks position at power plants has become worrisome, While domestic coal-based (DCB) plants have supplies for just over 8 days, imported coal-based (ICB) units have stocks for nine-and-a-half days.

peak power demand met during the day hit 199.58 GW, the highest this fiscal year. On the same day, power outages across India due to coal shortage totalled 7,085 MW.

Though the maximum peak power demand met during the day came down from the April 8 high, the average demand met between April 4 and 13 (10 days) stood at a significant 195.43 GW. On April 4, the number of DCB and ICB power plants with critical coal stocks (below 25 per cent of the normative requirement) stood at 67 and 11, respectively. This rose to 81 DCB and 11 ICB plants on April 17.