Private power producers ask Coal India to increase supplies from Korba fields

NEW DELHI: In a bid to address the chronic coal shortage, private power producers have asked Coal India for more rakes for coal at their plants from CIL’s arm South Eastern Coalfields’ Korba fields.

They have pointed out that the share of rake loading for non-power and e-auction category of consumers have come down, which is being used to ramp up supplies to state and central sector power plants.

“Most of the private power plants are facing super- critical stock levels (for less than four days) and are being forced to reduce generation/ back down units,” Association of Power Producers (APP) wrote in a letter to Coal India Chairman Gopal Singh.

It further stated, “..necessary instructions may be issued for augmentation of loading in rakes per day for private power plants, to help alleviate the coal shortage and enable them to meet their generation commitments”.

According to an analysis by association for the last four months about loading rakes per day (RPD) beginning from the fourth day to the 17th day of each month from Korba (including Raigarh) area and the proportion of share of loading on account of state/central sector plants has increased 49 per cent of the total kitty in October from 28 per cent in July.

The state and central power plants got 7 RPD in July during the period under review, which increased to 12.1 RPD in October this year. However, private power plants got 9.6 RPD in July, which remained almost same at 9.5 RPD in October.

According to Central Electricity Authority data for October, as many as 16 non-pithead power plants had coal stocks for less than four days, while 10 had for less than a week, out of the total 112 projects monitored by it.