‘Coal to last less than four days at 64 power plants’

No unit has at least 8 days’ stock: CEA

Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, 29/10/2019: A view of the NTPC Simhadri Thermal Power Station, in Visakhapatnam on October 29, 2019. BHEL will launch work on 25 MW floating solar power plant at Simhadri Thermal Power Station at a cost of Rs.100 crore. The plant will be installed in the raw water reservoir of NTPC at Deepanjalinagar near Parawada. Photo: K.R. Deepak / The Hindu

Ahead of the festival season, the coal supply crisis seems to be deepening with 64 non-pithead power plants left with less than four days of the dry fuel stocks.

The latest report on coal stocks for power plants from the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) also showed that 25 such power plants had coal stocks for less than seven days as on October 3. The CEA monitors coal stocks at 135 power plants that have a cumulative generation capacity of 165 GW on a daily basis.

Overall, total coal stocks of 78,09,200 tonnes were available at the 135 plants as on October 3 and that was sufficient for four days. The daily coal requirement of these plants is 18,24,100 tonnes. Among the 135 plants, not even one had 8 or more days of coal stocks.