NTPC, which contributes about 25 per cent of India’s power generation, will remain revenue neutral to the price increase announced by Coal India Ltd. (CIL), from whom the country’s single largest thermal power company sources majority of its coal requirement.
Of the 15 coal-based power plants of NTPC, barring three, all are pit-head plants (within a close distance of coal mines). The non-pit-head plants are: Dadri, Tanda and Unachar in Uttar Pradesh. These power plants get their coal from Bharat Coking Coal, and Central Coalfields.
This means that these plants will pay either a 15 per cent higher price (since BCCL and Eastern Coalfields have been allowed a higher hike) or a 10 per cent hike if the tie-up is from any other coal company in CIL fold.
“Whatever the price works out to after Thursday’s increase, we will pass it on through a fuel cost pass through arrangement that we have with our consumers,” a board-level official told The Hindu .
NTPC, which also has seven gas-based power stations and is entering renewable energy now buys 80 per cent of its coal requirement from CIL with which it has signed fuel supply agreements (FSAs) for all but two of its plants — at Kahalgaon in Jharkhand and Farkka in West Bengal. NTPC has a total generation capacity of 30,664 MW and accounts for 18.79 per cent of India’s total capacity.
