NEW DELHI: The ongoing coal crisis has taken its toll not just on the power sector, but also on non-power sectors especially the aluminium industry. A day after Coal India decided to temporarily halt fuel supply to non-power sectors, the Aluminium Association of India (AAI) on Friday said that domestic aluminium plants continue to grapple with critically low levels of coal stock, with no recourse or alternative means to meet their power needs and keep the plants operational.
The association has warned that if coal supply is not restored immediately, it would lead to irrevocable collateral damage to these assets. The association has argued that any import of coal will take 90-120 days of cycle period from purchase to consumption. Therefore, sudden decision by Coal India to stop the domestic coal supply to the aluminium industry has resulted in complete chaos.
According to the association, aluminium production is a 24x7 and 365 days continuous process industry and there is no provision to switch off and switch on. “It is a highly power intensive industry, just to illustrate 1 tonne of aluminium requires 14,500 units of continuous power which is around 15 times in comparison to steel industry and 145 times as that for cement.
The sector depends on captive power plants to fulfil the energy demand. Aluminium industry has set up its in-house captive power plant 9.4 GW, which is 34% of thermal CPP capacity of the country. According to the Aluminium Association of India, while power demand of the industry (9.4 GW) is just 6% of the country’s total demand, it is 123% of the total energy traded at the Indian Energy Exchange. Therefore, it says, it is not feasible for the aluminium plants to get power from the power grid and has to depend solely on captive power plants.
Meanwhile, the government has said that the coal supply to the power sector is continuously improving. The Power System Operation Corporation Limited (POSOCO) on Thursday reported that the total capacity of units under outage due to low coal stocks has reduced from 11 GW on 12 October, 2021 to 5 GW on 14 October, 2021. This is an improvement over the total capacity of units under outage due to low coal stocks of 6 GW reported on 13 October, 2021.