From now, coal supply to states as per fortnightly power generation
Aman Sood
Patiala, April 4
The Central Government has tweaked rules for supply of coal to all states and now “coal will be supplied based on coal generation within the past fortnight” instead of quotas fixed.
The change in coal rakes being supplied by Coal India to Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL) for Ropar and Lehra Mohabatt thermal plants has been reduced from five per day to four per day as per new principles for rakes allocation finalised by the Power Ministry.
Don’t want unnecessary spending
The primary focus for us at present is to ensure that we are not arm-twisted to buy imported coal and spend hundreds of crores because we have ample coal available from our own captive mine. A PSPCL functionary
The two thermal plants have a capacity of 1,760 MW. The average daily generation from these two plants for the fortnight up to March 13 was 25 million units (MUs) daily.
The Pachhwara coal mine has a target of supplying six rakes per day in April with a generation target of 9 MUs per day. Assuming the same generation target during April, the coal supply from Coal India will be required for supplying coal to generate balance 16 MUs per day. This means the Railways will allocate three rakes per day for supplying 10,000 metric tonnes per day coal by Coal India against actual supply of four rakes per day.
“The average per day generation for the next fortnight from March 14 to March 27 is 12.12 million units per day due to inclement weather from March 17 onwards. The average generation for week from March 28 to April 3 is 4.4 million units per day. This implies the rake allocation by the Railways will get further reduced,” said a top PSPCL official.
“The coal supply will be just sufficient to run the plants on daily basis and there will not be any scope for further building up the coal stock for paddy season. PSPCL is procuring 1.5 lakh tonnes of imported coal. The coal stock at Ropar and Lehra Mohabatt are 26.3 days and 22.3 days, respectively,” said senior officials. “However, given our regular supply from the state-owned Pachhwara coal mine, we don’t think there will be any paucity of coal to run our thermal plants. Rather we can divert some coal to private plants during peak paddy season when the demand is very high,” he added.
“Domestic coal will be allocated to state generating stations linked by rail, in the ratio of the fortnightly average generation of generating stations. Further, coal to be made available from captive mines would be excluded for allocation of rail rakes from Coal India Limited. This has come into effect from April 1,” said All India Power Engineers Federation spokesperson VK Gupta.
A maximum demand of 3,345 LUs and a peak demand of 14,311 MW have been recorded last year and in the paddy season, a projected unrestricted demand of around 15,336 MW is being envisaged. “The primary focus for us at present is to ensure that we are not arm-twisted to buy imported coal and spend hundreds of crores because we have ample coal available from our own captive mine,” said a top PSPCL functionary.
