NEW DELHI: Months of coal deficit seems to have finally come to an end with only four out of 125 plants running with critical stocks. “As a result of record performance, number of coal plants with critical stock is only 4 out of 125 (as on 20th February, 2019) compared to two-third coal plants with critical stock in 2014,” said Minister for Railways and Coal Piyush Goyal said on Friday, while releasing a booklet on the five-year achievements of the ministries under his charge.
Stocks at power plants have risen to 25.37 million tonnes (MT) in February from as much as 10 MT in October 2018, enough to generate electricity for 15 days, said a coal ministry official. This is a significant improvement from October, when they had enough coal for just six days and many had no coal at all. However, Coal India executives say that the stock pile up was mainly due to the lean winter season when fuel consumption remained low.
To prepare for the summer, the state-run miner has asked power firms to draw as much coal as possible. To boost the power sector, Goyal also said that superior coal quality has been ensured with steps such as third party sampling procedures and 100 per cent crushed coal to power plants. Coal India is also delivering benefits of reduced cost of electricity as now amount of coal required to generate per unit of electricity (specific coal consumption) has been reduced by 8 per cent since 2014. Further, the government has set a production target of 610 MT in 2018-19 for Coal India, while the company has internally set an annual output target of 652 MT. Till January 2019, the world’s largest coal miner was able to produce 469.65 MT of coal — 6.6 per cent growth year-on-year.
