Power crisis: Coal Ministry, CIL promise to ramp up coal supply

In a statement, the Ministry of Power said: "An inter-Ministerial sub-Group led by the Ministry of Coal has been monitoring the coal stock situation twice a week. In order to manage the coal stock and ensure equitable distribution of coal, Ministry of Power constituted a Core Management Team (CMT) on 27.08.2021 comprising of representatives from MOP, CEA, POSOCO, Railways and Coal India Limited (CIL) to ensure daily monitoring."

"The CMT is closely monitoring and managing the coal stocks on daily basis and ensuring follow up actions with CIL, Railways to improve the coal supply to power plants," read the statement.

"Ministry of Coal and CIL have assured that they are making best efforts to increase dispatch to power sector to 1.6 MT per day in next three days and thereafter try to touch 1.7 MT per day," the Ministry assured.

The Ministry said the coal supply as well as consequent power situation is likely to improve.

"There are four reasons for the depletion of coal stocks at the power plant end- unprecedented increase in demand of electricity due to revival of economy; heavy rains in coal mine areas during September, 2021 thereby adversely affecting the coal production as well as despatch of coal from mines; increase in prices of imported coal to unprecedented high level leading to substantial reduction in power generation from imported coal based power plants leading to more dependence on domestic coal; non-building of adequate coal stocks before the onset of Monsoon," the Ministry said.

"A surge in revival of economy after second wave of Covid, led to unprecedented increase in demand and consumption of electricity. The daily consumption of electricity has crossed beyond 4 Billion units per day  and 65% to 70% demand is being met by coal fired power generation only, thereby increasing dependence on coal," the statement said.

Power consumption for the period August-September has progressively increased from 106.6 BU per month in 2019 (normal non covid year) to 124.2 BU per month in 2021.

During this period the share of coal-based generation has also increased from 61.91 percent in 2019 to 66.35 percent in 2021.

As a consequence, total coal consumption in the month of August-Sept, 2021 has increased by 18 percent in comparison to corresponding period in 2019.

Ministry of Power has issued guidelines on Oct 8 for operationalizing optimum utilization of generating stations as per the requirements in the Electricity Grid.

"These guidelines will enable imported coal based plants (having sufficient coal) to operate and ease out the burden on domestic coal,' read the statement.

Slamming the Centre for inadequate coal supply against the PSPCL’s agreements with various subsidiaries of the Coal India Ltd (CIL), the Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi on Saturday asked it to immediately enhance State’s coal supply as per quota to tide over power crisis with impending shutdown of its thermal plants due to fast depleting coal reserves which are likely to exhaust with in next couple of days, reports UNI.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has sought "personal intervention" from Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a power crisis looms over the national capital, it was reported on Saturday.

Kejriwal on Saturday wrote a letter to Prime Minister Modi and requested the latter's office for diversion of adequate coal and gas to power plants supplying electricity to Delhi.

"Delhi could face a power crisis. I am personally keeping a close watch over the situation. We are trying our best to avoid it. In the meanwhile, I wrote a letter to Hon’ble PM seeking his personal intervention," he posted on Twitter.

In the letter, Kejriwal stated that the power plants are facing a shortage of coal for the third month in a row which started in August this year.