Coal India says geared up to meet any surge in fuel demand from power sector

State-owned Coal India Ltd on Saturday said that it is well geared to meet any surge in demand for coal from the power sector.

The statement follows power demand touching an all-time high of 187.3 GW on Friday.

“CIL (Coal India) is well geared to meet any surge in demand for the dry fuel from the power sector especially on the back of close to 63 million tonnes stock at its pitheads,” the PSU said in a statement.

The company is also pushing ahead for increased production, committed to shoring up the supplies to coal-fuelled power plants. In this backdrop, close to 67 per cent of the total coal-fired power generation in the country is fuelled through CIL’s supplies.

Of the 199 GW of coal-based power programmed for generation per day during the ongoing fiscal, 133 GW is scheduled from CIL linked coal.

Average coal-based power generation of power per day which was 2.795 BU till Friday spurted up to 3.072 BU, a jump of nearly 10 per cent on the morning of the record making day.

Coal-based power generation remains consistently high among all other categories.

“This increase in coal-based power generation bodes well for us. If this continues, we could expect our supplies to power sector go up in near future,” the company said adding that the power plants need to submit adequate programme at the coal companies to avoid any shortage of dry fuel as the demand started peaking.

Coal India is focusing on ramping up its supplies to pithead based power plants to higher levels. This would influence in cost per unit of power generated coming down.

Coal transportation cost to pithead power plants is comparably lower than long distanced based ones, making the landed cost of coal lower. This in turn makes the generation cost economical.

Coal-based power generation accounted for 78.6 per cent of the country’s total generation on Friday when all India peak power demand, which is the highest supply in a day, surged to a new record of 187.3 GW in the morning eclipsing the previous high of 185.82 GW recorded on January 20.

Of the total 3.906 billion units (BU) generated on Friday, coal-fired generation chipped in the bulk with 3.072 BU.