JOIN USHM Amit Shah meets power, coal ministers amid supply crisis
Union Home Minister Amit Shah, on Monday, held a meeting with Power Minister R K Singh and Coal Minister Pralhad Joshi and asked them to prepare a contingency plan to face any challenge in the event of a shortage of coal faced by thermal power plants.
During the hour-long meeting, Shah discussed the availability of coal to power plants and the current power demand.
In the meeting, Singh and Joshi briefed him about the steps taken to meet the current crisis, sources said.
While asking the Coal Ministry to ramp up the production, Shah also instructed them to increase production from hydropower plants.
The meeting came in the wake of several states warning of a possible power crisis due to the shortage of coal supply to power plants, officials said.
Also Read | Amid shortages, Coal India scales up fuel supply to power plants to 1.51 MT per day
Separately, State-owned CIL on Monday said that it had scaled up the supply of coal to power utilities across the country to 1.51 million tonnes (MT) per day during the past four days of the current month.
The average supply to the coal-fired power plants during October so far has been 1.43 MT per day. The CIL, the largest supplier of dry fuel said that it was building up adequate evacuation logistics to transport coal.
According to Power Ministry data, the power consumption of 3,900 MU on October 8 was the highest this month so far (from October 1 to 9) which also became a cause of concern during the ongoing coal shortage.
Also Read | Coal crisis: States fear blackouts even as Centre assuages ‘unnecessary’ panic
According to reports, over half of India's 135 coal-fired power plants, which in total supply around 70 per cent of electricity, have fuel stocks of less than three days. Coal stocks at power plants on October 7 were not adequate as there were 16 plants with a cumulative capacity of 16,880 MW that had dry fuel for zero days.
Electricity supplies are under strain globally as coal prices surge and demand and supply chains are strained by the recovery of consumption following lockdowns to contain the pandemic. In India heavy rains in September in coal-producing states-Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh and Odisha hit the domestic coal production.
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