With calls for more coal gaining tempo Coal India Limited (CIL), amid renewed urgency, scaled up supplies to power utilities of the country to 1.51 million tonnes (MTs) per day during the past four days of October ahead of the festival.
The total off-take has gone up to 1.73 MTs per day during October, till 10th posting 10 per cent growth over same period last year.
“The aim is to ramp up supplies to power sector even higher which we hope to achieve post puja. Once the despatch rate is maintained the stock build up will help tide over the tight situation” said S N Tiwary, Director Marketing CIL.
Despite heavy rainfall, CIL produced close to 126 MTs of coal during current fiscal’s Q2, setting a record high for the second quarter, posting 9.6 per cent year-on-year growth. During the first ten days of October CIL’s output has logged 6.5 per cent growth over last October. Going forward, the production will increase further when the attendance at coalfields improves after festival holidays.
CIL’s supplies to generation companies (Gencos) have been at an all-time high till now this fiscal but it is the never experienced before hunger for the dry fuel, spurred by an unmatched increase in power generation that upset the demand-supply scales.
Once, October and major festival are over conditions will improve and the power demand is expected to be down by a notch, easing the pressure.
During H1 of the current fiscal loading to power sector at 225.3 rakes per day was up 28 per cent compared to 176.3 rakes of last year same period. The company is building up adequate evacuation logistics to transport coal.
The major pain point for CIL has been 14 imported coal-based power plants scaling down their generation due to skyrocketing coal prices in the international markets. As a consequence, domestic coal based thermal power plants had to step in to fill in the generation shortfall, which in turn placed an unfactored load of around 10 MTs on CIL. Had this not happened the stocks at power plants would have been around 17MTs to 18 MTs instead of the bleak 7 MTs now.
During September’21 the generation from these plants at 2.041 MW fell short by 75 per cent against the target of 8.114 MW. The generation logged a negative growth of 72 per cent compared to September’20 when they generated 7.238 MW. Progressive up to September’21 the contraction in generation was 30 per cent over same period year ago.
“CIL is marshalling all its efforts to bridge the demand supply gap to the extent possible. With 40 MTs stock at our pitheads and increasing production, availability of coal would not be a problem” said a senior official of the company.
