Team News Riveting
Kolkata, December 9
Coal supplied from Coal India’s (CIL) sources recorded a robust 22.5 per cent growth in coal fired power generation of the country during April-November’21 compared to same period a year ago.
CIL’s despatches to coal-based power plants rose steeply to 340 MTs during April-November’21, posting an healthy increase of 62.6 MTs, against 277.4 MTs for comparable period last year.
At a thumb rule specific coal consumption of 0.67 Kg, that is the quantity of coal required to generate one unit of power, CIL’s coal helped generate 507.46 Billion Units (BU) of power during the referred period spurring 22.5 per cent growth compared to 414.08 BU same period last year. This is higher than the growth of overall domestic coal-based generation including despatches from sources other than CIL.
Even when measured against a pre-pandemic April-November’19, the growth in power generation from CIL’s coal is 16 per cent when despatch to power plants was 292.88 MTs. This translates to a generation of 437.13 BU.
“Dispelling the notion that the recent mismatch between unprecedented coal demand and supply may have affected the power output, domestic coal-based power generation at 641.87 BU in fact grew by 19.8% during April-November’21 on a year-on-year comparison. Of this generation, CIL’s coal accounted for 79% “, said a senior executive of the company.
Coal-based power generation by 14 thermal plants in the country, who source their coal from overseas, fell by 42.7% to 30.04 BU during this period from 52.40 BU of last year. The scaling down in generation was due to soaring international coal prices.
Domestic coal-based power plants had stepped in to meet the gap where CIL supplied around 20 MTs of additional coal.
Coal stock situation at power plants is much improved now from a level of 7.24 MTs on 8th October to 18.84 MTs of indigenous coal on 7th December. CIL played a pivotal role in this stock build up.
CIL’s current coal despatch trend indicates record high supply to power sector during the ongoing fiscal eclipsing the previous high of 491MTs in FY’19.
