Power distribution companies fear that the situation will worsen next month if coal supplies do not improve.
Several Indian states are in the midst of their worst power crisis in six years with soaring electricity demand coming up short against issues with coal supplies and plants shuts for maintenance.
Power distribution companies expect the situation to worsen next month if coal supplies do not improve. At the aggregate level, stocks with Coal India and power plants can meet demand for a month-and-half, but at a disaggregated level, many plants have stocks only for days.
States blame the sharp rise in global coal prices — which affects plants that use imported coal — and the shortage of railway rakes (there’s a gap of around 18% or 80 rakes a day). Since March (and till early April), a benchmark price of imported coal has increased by a little over 40%. The situation has been compounded by low generation of power from gas-based plants on account of a 300% increase in gas prices over the past six months, and the unavailability of almost 12-15% of the country’s total power generating capacity on account of plant maintenance or other reasons.
Heat wave conditions have resulted in temperatures touching 47 degrees Celsius in some parts of the country and April is set to be one of the hottest April since 1951, Till April 27, the average maximum temperature for the month was the 12th highest.
With the temperatures rising across India, the peak power demand has risen by up to 50% in some states such as Punjab. As compared to last year, the overall electricity demand is India has risen by around 10%.
On Thursday, the power ministry said it supplied 202,000 MW of power with a shortfall of about 10,000 MW. The power ministry is accounting for a very few power cuts due to shortage of electricity supply and have said that most of the outages are due to local technical faults, hinting at the weak power distribution network.
On Friday, the supply went up to 207,000 MW.
“With demand rising and hot weather, the probability of electricity infrastructure heating up and caving in is very high,” said Debashish Mishra, a specialist on energy at consulting firm Deloitte.
Several states such as Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh are reporting 8-10 hours of unscheduled power cuts, mostly in smaller towns and rural areas, officials in these states admitted.
“The demand is beyond our expectation. It has increased by 50% as compared to April 2021. The last regime didn’t augment the power sector as per the future needs,” said Punjab power minister Harbhajan Singh, blaming the previous Congress government for the mess.
The Kashmir Power Distribution Corporation Limited (KPDCL) in a statement on Friday said the high electricity deficit has led to power cuts with a daily shortfall of about 900 MW. The total supply in the state is around 1,600 MW. Uttar Pradesh, which was reporting two to three hours of power cuts last week, is recording 8 to 10 hours of such cuts in some areas. Kerala power minister Power Minister K Krishnankutty said power cuts will continue for some more days as the state arranges additional power from Andhra Pradesh.
In Rajasthan, where the power demand has increased by 32% as compared to same period last year, power distribution companies are resorting to power cuts of six to nine hours. State government officials admitted that some rural areas were witnessing longer outages due to local technical faults. “Due to supply of very cheap power to a large number of consumers, we don’t have money to upgrade the power infrastructure, especially in rural and smaller towns,” an energy department official said on condition of anonymity.
While the states have blamed poor supply of coal for the power crisis, the Centre has blamed the opposition ruled states such as Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu for failing to pay dues to Coal India, the world’s biggest coal miner, and Indian Railways, which provides rakes to supply coal from mines to power stations.
R K Singh, the union power minister told reporters on Thursday that electricity shortages are primarily happening because states have not paid their dues to Coal India and are unable to lift allocated coal on time. “Then there are also instances wherein discoms do not buy power from the exchange and simply resort to load shedding,” Singh had said.
Maharashtra energy minister Nitin Raut said only a small part of the payment is pending. “Rest we have cleared,” he said. He claimed that the state owed Coal India ₹862.32 crore as on 28 April as against ₹2,608 crore power ministry had claimed. The state also has to pay the railways ₹270 crore for transporting coal between 1 April and 28 April. A Tamil Nadu power generation company official said ₹823 crore claimed by power ministry was old and disputed.
A senior Rajasthan government official said that coal shortages have reduced Power Load Factor (PLF), which is the generation capacity of a power plant, to 30-50% of coal fired plants in several states of the country leading to short supply. Half of 2,36,108 MW installed thermal capacity is with the state governments and rest with Central public sector National Thermal Power Corporation.
According to power ministry’s report, power plants in the country have 31% of the normative level of stocks on April 27, seven percentage points less than on April 11, showing the stocks are depleting fast at power plants. Normative level is the coal required to run the power plants at 80% PLF for 21 days.
The ministry’s report shows that West Bengal has 4% of the normative level, Karnataka 13%, Maharashtra 15%, Andhra Pradesh 10%, Rajasthan 15%, Uttar Pradesh 18% and Punjab 27%. Except, the coal bearing states of Jharkhand, Odisha and Chhattisgarh, the normal level of coal in most states is lower than 50%.
Some state power ministers raised the issue of coal shortages on Friday. Delhi power minister Satyendra Jain on Friday said that power plants (supplying power to the state) have coal only for 1-3 days. Harbhajan Singh said Punjab has coal for two days and Raut said Maharashtra power plants have coal for four days.
Although overall the normative level of coal at NTPC plants is 55%, some plants such as Dadri, Tanda and Kudgi have coal stocks of less than 10%. And coal stock is at precarious levels at Independent Power Providers (IPP) with plants at Lalitpur and Rosa in UP having less than 5%. Overall, IPP power plants have coal stock of 32%.
Terming the coal situation as not very good, Mishra predicted that the situation may become worse in September-October if the power companies are not able to stock coal before the arrival of the monsoon, which typically disrupts coal mining and supply. “Normally, in these months the power companies stock coal for post-monsoon period. But, because of high electricity demand this has not happened. There is just 23 million tonnes of coal at power plants and 58-60 million tonnes is still to be lifted from mines. There should be atleast 40 million tonnes at power plants before monsoon to prevent a major crisis,” he said.
Source: PTI
