NEW DELHI: Amid reports of power crisis in the country due to coal shortage, Coal India on Monday said its coal supply to the power sector was increased by 15.6% in April 2022, compared to the same month last year.
India’s largest coal producer highlighted that it pushed up its supplies to power plants to 49.7 million tonnes (MTs) in April, an increase of 6.7 MTs compared to the same period last year when the sector’s despatach was 43 MTs. However, Coal India’s efforts could not fulfill the demand as many states were facing power outages due to coal shortages.
“On average CIL supplied 1.66 MTs of coal a day to power utilities in April 2022, which sped to 1.73 MTs during the last week. Average supply per day is on par with what was programmed by CIL for this sector during the first quarter of FY’23,” said CIL in a statement. To keep up with the increased appetite for coal, CIL accelerated its production to 53.5 MTs, logging a strong 27.6% growth.This is 11.6 MTs higher compared to 41.9 MTs of April 21.According to the power ministry’s daily (2 May 2022) report, India reported a 207 MW power shortage.
The most affected states were Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, among others. Similarly, as per the Central Electricity Authority’s daily report, coal stock at 108 out of 173 plants have reached critical levels. Among them, 88 plants were based on domestic coal, 12 were based on imported coal, and 8 were not operational.Meanwhile, the ministry said the power consumption in the country grew 13.6%year-on-year to 132.98 billion units (BU) this month, indicating the impact of the early onset of summers and spurt in economic activities.