Team News Riveting
Kolkata, January 23
Coal based power generation accounted for 78.6 per cent of the country’s total generation on January 22, 2021 when all India peak power demand, which is the highest supply in a day, surged to a new record of 187.3 GW in the morning eclipsing the previous high of 185.82 GW recorded on January 20, 2021.
Of the total 3.906 Billion Units (BU) generated on January 22, coal fired generation chipped in the bulk with 3.072 BU.
CIL is well geared to meet any surge in demand for the dry fuel from the power sector especially on the back of close to 63 Million Tonne stock at its pitheads. The company is also pushing ahead for increased production, committed to shore up the supplies to coal fueled power plants.
In this backdrop, close to 67 per cent of the total coal fired power generation in the country is fueled through Coal India’s (CIL) supplies. Of the 199 GW of coal-based power programmed for generation, per day, during the ongoing fiscal 133 GW is scheduled from CIL linked coal.
Average coal-based power generation of power per day which was 2.795 BU till 22nd January 2021 spurted up to 3.072 BU, a jump of nearly 10% on the morning of the record making day. Coal based power generation remains consistently high among all other categories.
“This increase in coal-based power generation bodes well for us. If this continues, we could expect our supplies to the power sector to go up in near future” said a senior executive of CIL, adding “Power plants need to submit adequate programs at our coal companies to avoid any shortage of coal as the demand starts peaking”.
Coal India is focusing to ramp up its supplies to pithead-based power plants to higher levels. This would influence the cost per unit of power generated coming down. Coal transportation cost to pithead power plants is comparably lower than long distance based ones, making the landed cost of coal lower. This in turn makes the generation cost economical.
