Coal stock shrinks with rising demand

Coal stocks continued to shrink with power demand across the country hitting a peak of well above the 200 GW mark this week. Thermal power plants across the country have coal stocks to last just 7.5 days, showed data from the Central Electricity Authority (CEA).

- Rituraj Baruah

Analysts said the decline in stocks comes on the back of a number factors, including rising demand, supply constraints and logistical issues. On 10 October, the peak power demand reached 221.62 GW, with the peak shortage at 5.36 GW.

Generation outage-or unoperational power generation capacity-stood at 43.754 GW.

On the supply side, the gap in daily receipt of coal by plants stood at 296,000 tonnes on 10 October, with supplies of nearly 2.1 million tonnes and consumption of nearly 2.4 million tonnes. The gap was filled from reserve stocks and imported coal.