Power projects in the country are currently experiencing no shortage of coal and these plants have a 25% higher coal supply at 430.6 million tonnes in April-December 2021 compared to a year ago, Parliament informed. Thursday.

“Currently, there is no shortage of coal for power plants in the country,” Union Energy Minister RK Singh said in a written response to the Lok Sabha on Thursday.

According to the response, the total amount of coal shipped to the power sector by Coal India Ltd (CIL) and Singareni Collieries Company Ltd (SCCL) between April and December 2021 was approximately 430.6 million tonnes (MT) , compared to around 344.2 MT in the period a year ago. It was around 375.2 MT during the corresponding period of 2019-20.

The dispatch showed growth of about 25% from the previous year and about 15% from 2019-20, he added.

Furthermore, Singh told the House that coal imports were reduced to 21.4 MT in 2021-22 (April-December) from 35.1 MT during the same period of 2020-21 and 52.5 MT during the same period of 2019-20.

The deficit of imported coal was compensated by the supply of domestic coal, he said.

He also informed the Chamber that as a result of the above measures, the stock of coal available in the power stations has decreased from 7.2 MT on October 8, 2021 to around 25 MT on January 26, 2022.

The Indian government has taken the following steps to increase the supply of coal to power stations.

To respond to coal supply issues in the electricity sector, an interministerial sub-group meets regularly to take various operational decisions to strengthen the supply of coal to thermal power plants (TPP) as well as to deal with possible contingent situations. related to the electricity sector, in particular to alleviate the critical position of coal stocks in power plants.

The group includes representatives from the Ministries of Power, Coal and Railways, Central Electricity Authority (CEA), Coal India Limited (CIL) and Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL).

The Ministry of Energy (MoP) has established a Central Management Team (CMT) comprising members of MoP, Railways, CEA, CIL, NTPC, DVC and POSOCO, to ensure close monitoring of coal stocks in TPPs. And, operational decisions are made at CMT to increase the supply of sufficient coal from the TPPs.

The government has released the Revised Coal Storage Standards, which require power plants to maintain sufficient stocks at all times to meet any contingent situation.

Electric utilities import coal taking into account their needs as well as economic costs.

In addition, on December 7, 2021, the Department of Energy advised power plants to import the necessary coal for blending purposes in 2022-2023.

(Only the title and image of this report may have been edited by Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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