KOLKATA (miningweekly.com) – India’s Coal Ministry has requested thermal power generation companies to increase plant level coal stocks to about 30-million tons, from 16.5-million tons at present, ahead of the monsoon season starting in June.

Coal Secretary Susheel Kumar has said that a production and supply plan is being prepared to avoid a repeat of last year’s situation, when thermal power stations grappled with coal shortages during the rainy season.

“We are fully geared because we have 55.5-million tons of pithead stocks. What we need to stock at power plants is about 30-million tons and that’s the goal.”

Kumar stated that there was adequate stock, as per Central Electricity Authority (CEA) guidelines that require power plants to stock 22 days of coal consumption.

“The power plants will need to keep this stock. In any case, power plants faced the problem last year and so they know what the problems are. This year I am sure they are going to be careful,” he said.

In 2017, power companies faced shortages of coal during the monsoon rainy season, but according to the Coal Ministry, the shortage stemmed not from availability of fuel from large miners including Coal India Limited, which accounted for about 80% of supplies, but also power companies regulating intake of coal at the plant level.

According to data available from the CEA, 22 thermal power plants faced coal shortages in early April. Of these, 11 stations had stocks equivalent to seven days’ consumption and were categorised as ‘critical stocks’ and the balance with coal stock of less than four days equivalent consumption, categorised as ‘super critical stocks’.

Sporadic reports indicate that several provinces are reeling from the fall in electricity generation as temperatures rise along with energy demand as the summer months start to peak.

Reports from the distribution company of the central Indian desert province of Rajasthan indicate a power generation shortfall of about 4 000 MW in the current month, and though measures to cut supplies for few hours a day have been kept in abeyance, officials said that “dangers of a power crisis still loom in the region, which is entirely dependent on thermal power generation”.

The officials said that most of the thermal power plants in the province do not have coal even to last a week.