Fuel stock at ten NTPC power plants fall to zero

KOLKATA: Ten out of 24 thermal power stations of India’s largest power generation company, NTPC, are stranded with zero fuel inventory or stocks that won’t last a day.

This has hit generation and revenue as the state-run firm is unable to cater to higher demand, company executives said.

About 64% or 24,030 megawatts of its capacity of 38,850 megawatts has ‘super critical’ stocks, enough to meet barely three days’ requirement, and almost the entire capacity of its joint ventures totalling 4,610 MW are similarly placed.

NTPC plants that have no fuel inventory and are running on stocks arriving on a daily basis are Solapur Thermal Power Station, Sipat TPS, Simhadri TPS, Farakka TPS and Kahalgaon TPS. Plants that have less than a day’s stock are Korba TPS and Kudgi TPS. Joint ventures of NTPC that are faced with zero or near zero days stocks are NSPCL Bhilai plant, NTECL Vallur plant and KBUNL Kanti.

“Increased demand for power has forced us to generate more, requiring more coal, which has reduced inventory at almost every power station of NTPC,” a senior NTPC executive said. “Although almost all power plants are running at present, we have been forced to scale down capacity utilisation by at least 5% at each of our plants, which is now hovering around 70%. This has led to generation loss due to lack of fuel.”

This is despite Coal India’s claim of having sent near 9% more coal to the power sector during April-October this year. The world’s largest fossil fuel supplier claims to have sent 22 million tonnes more coal at 273 million tonnes during the period to the sector against the previous corresponding period.

Several Coal India subsidiaries including Mahanadi Coalfields, Central Coalfields and South Eastern Coalfields have recently received directions from the government for sending coal to public sector power companies, including NTPC, on a priority basis.

Coal India’s supplies on a daily basis touched 1.75 million tonnes a day between April and October while the Centre has asked it to jack it up to at least 2 million tonnes a day. A senior Coal India executive said the company is trying to increase supplies to its target level of 2 million tonnes in November to increase stocks at power plants.

Coal scarcity has been dogging the power sector despite Coal India’s claim of loading the fuel on goods trains for the power sector growing at 8.2% during April-October 2018.

Coal India claimed that it loaded 203 rakes a day on an average to power stations ending October 2018 against 187 rakes a day for similar period last year—an increase of 16 rakes a day. It has liquidated 34.57 million tonnes of its pit-head stock during the first seven months, pulling down stock pile to around 21 million tonnes at the end of October 2018 from 55.55 million tonnes of stock in April.