Private thermal plants face severe coal shortage

The stocks at 78 domestic coal-based plants across the country were reported to be in a "critical" category. Among these plants were two independent power producers from Punjab, which had stocks sufficient for only one to two days. According to V K Gupta, spokesperson for the All India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF), he mentioned that the GVK plant in Punjab had already closed down due to coal problems. All three units of the power plant at Talwandi Sabo, which had stock left for two days, were running on reduced load. A similar situation was observed at Unit 2 of Haryana?s Yamunanagar power plant. Additionally, six thermal plants across the country that were running on imported coal also reported critical stocks, including Adani Power. Gupta informed that among the 78 thermal plants with critical coal stock, 24 were private sector plants, 16 belonged to NTPC, three to DVC, and 34 were state sector plants. In Rajastha, all seven thermal plants had critical coal stock ranging from 2% to 14%. Likewise, all six plants in West Bengal, as well as three each in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, were facing critical coal stock situations, he added. He stated that the highest peak power demand this year had been recorded at 239.9 GW on September 1. On October 10, the peak power demand reached 221.62 GW, with a peak shortage of 5.36 GW. Regarding the supply side, Gupta noted that the gap in the daily receipt of coal by plants was at 2,96,000 tonne on October 10. The supplies amounted to nearly 2.1 million tonne, while the consumption was nearly 2.4 million tonnes.