Coal stocks at thermal power plants improve to 27 MT in Dec

Gevra coal mine in Chhattisgarh.

Coal stocks at India’s domestic thermal power plants stood at 27 million tonnes (MT) until December 9, showing a marked improvement from the year's low of 18.5 MT recorded around a month ago.

Around 20 domestic coal-based power plants recorded critical level in stocks, marking a sharp fall from a high of 75 around October 23. Power plants slip into critical coal stock when the dry fuel inventory goes below 25 percent of the normative level. Coal stock data beyond December 9 was not available at the time of filing this report.

The reason for the improved coal stocks at thermal power plants is mostly higher production, coupled with relatively stable power demand, senior officials of the power ministry said, requesting anonymity. "Coal stocks had depleted to the year's low in October due to a long rain spell in coal-producing states in the first half of the month. Production picked up gradually from November. Now the daily supply of coal is more than the average daily consumption and there is a trend of coal stock accretion,” a senior official of the coal ministry said, refusing to be identified.

As for India's power demand in December, the growth has not been as high as recorded in the previous months, the power ministry official said. "As such, the demand doesn't spike much in December."

On December 9, India's power demand stood at 185.5 gigawatt (GW), while the shortage or the demand that could n0t be met was 303 megawatt (MW). Data beyond December 9 was not available at the time of filing this report. The peak power demand was 186.5 GW and the shortage was 431 MW on the same day a year back.

Since India's overall power demand has seen a sharp spike, the stocks continue to be lower than the peak summers between April and July when coal stocks hovered around 33-35 MT. Taking cognisance of the coal shortage at the thermal power plants, the power ministry on October 25 directed all thermal generating stations, including Independent Power Producers (IPPs), to mandatorily blend imported coal at 6 percent of their total capacity till March 2024.

India's electricity requirement grew 9.6 percent in FY2022-23 over the previous year, and by 8.5 percent during April – October 2023 over the same period in 2022.

Union Minister for Power and New and Renewable Energy RK Singh told the Rajya Sabha on December 6 that despite the country reeling under a shortage of domestic coal, widespread power cuts and blackouts were averted in September 2022 with the government's mandate of using imported coal for blending at thermal power plants.

"The gap between daily coal consumption and daily arrival of domestic coal ranged between 2.65 lakh tonnes to 0.5 lakh tonnes between September 2022 and January 2023. If the imports for blending had not been made, coal stocks in thermal power plants would have reduced to zero in September 2022 and would have continued so, leading to widespread power cuts and blackouts," Singh said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha.