KOLKATA | Oct 18, 2016: State-run Coal India (CIL) sees sales picking up in the coming days as the onset of winters in northern India would mean an increase in power consumption.
Sales at CIL fell 1% year-on-year in the first half of the current fiscal, mainly due to the four months of a near normal, well-distributed monsoon. Coal accounts for about three-fourths of India’s electricity generation.
Over the past several weeks, power producers have been refusing to lift additional coal from pit heads, a Coal India senior executive said on condition of anonymity. As a result, coal stocks at power plants hit a low of 16 days against 22 days during the same time last year.
“Power houses have assured us that they would now be lifting more coal compared to what they have been lifting in the past several weeks,” said the executive quoted above. “The decision is based on the assumption that power demand will rise steadily now that monsoon is over.”
Production growth at Coal India was flat in the first half of 2016-17 although the company achieved 90% of its targets. Despite a marginal fall in sales, it achieved 88% of its sales target for the period. CIL managed to produce 230 MT of coal and sold around 249 MT during the period, thereby reducing stocks by by some 19 MT.
The way ahead is to step-up demand side innovation to stem carbon emissions from thermal power plants. Now that coal-fuelled power plants can reportedly be restarted in an hour or so, we need to rapidly diffuse such demand-side innovation. Coal-fuelled power units can then be operated as peaking-load plants in the hours of peak power demand.
(Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/)