Power generation loss of 84.69 billion units in Apr-Jan 2012-13: CEA

07 Mar 2013 Evaluate

Poor quality coal supply, coal shortages and shut-down of plants for want of fuel, has led to generation loss of 84.69 billion units (BUs) in the country during April-January 2012-13. As per the Central Electricity Authority (CEA), fuel constraints and subsequent loss in generation also impacted the plant load factor (PLF) which was 69.85% for thermal power projects and 42.60% for gas based power projects during the same period.

To be more precise, of the 84.69 BUs generation loss, as high as 58.36 BUs was on the back of gas shortage and 11.73 BUs following shortage of coal. Further, wet and poor coal quality also resulted in generation loss of 4.3 BUs whereas 8.5 BUs were lost due shut-down of power plants. Moreover, another factor which led to generation loss of 1.8 BUs was transmission constraints and Mundra, Sterlite, Udupi were some of the power plants mainly affected due to transmission constraints.

As per the CEA, in the current financial 2012-13, the expected gap between the requirement and availability of domestic coal was estimated at 70 million tonne (MT). Of which, 46 MT was to be met through import of coal, for which all the utilities have been advised to take necessary action. Additional 24 MT of coal would be needed to run power plants designed on imported coal.

Further, only 82% of the total coal was available in January. Against the demand of 48.2 MT, thermal power stations received only about 39.6 MT coal and of these 32 plants, 17 were having coal stock of less than four days.

With this kind of situation, until and unless the government takes meaningful steps to increase domestic coal production, availability of coal will remain an issue for the industry for at least the next 2-3 years. Fast-tracking the land and environment clearance process, implementation of price pooling of coal and improving mining efficiency at Coal India, will help to drive growth. For April-December 2012, Coal India’s production growth was 6.1% y-o-y and growth in dispatches to the power sector in the same period was 11% y-o-y. 

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