The government on Friday that the country has enough domestic coal supply and that the power shortage is not as high as it is being projected, CNBC-TV18 reported.
''We have 71 mt domestic coal with us and 21 mt coal is at the thermal power plants right now,'' the minister said. He added that the import-based plants are affected due to hiked coal prices and such plants were not operational.
Due to this, the minister said that the government plans to revive production in abandoned coal mines and is preparing to address coal supply shortages in the rainy season.
Also Read: India looking to boost coal output by up to 100 MT, reopen closed mines
Further, coal secretary A K Jain also said that India is looking to boost its coal output by 75-100 million tonnes in the next two-to-three years by restarting the closed mines, according to Reuters.
Meanwhile, the power ministry said in a statement on Thursday that the government has ordered all imported coal power plants ordered to operate at full capacity as power demand has surged almost 20 percent in energy terms.
In its statement, the power ministry explained that the demand for power has gone up by almost 20 percent in energy terms. The supply of domestic coal has increased but the increase in the supply is not sufficient to meet the increased demand for power, which is leading to load shedding in different areas.
Because of the mismatch between the daily consumption of coal for power generation and the daily receipt of coal at the power plant, the stocks of coal at the power plant have been declining at a worrisome rate, according to the power ministry.
The plants are have been told to first supply power to power purchase agreement (PPA) holders and sell the surplus to power exchanges. If generators or group companies own coal mines abroad, mining profit is to be set off to extent of shareholding, according to a CNBC-TV18 report.
PPA holders shall pay generating co on weekly basis, either at benchmark rate or mutually negotiated rate. If discoms or states are unable to buy power, either way, it will be sold in power exchanges.
State-run Coal India - the world’s largest coal miner, which produces 80 percent of India’s coal, plans to increase its annual output to one billion tonnes by 2024, from 622.6 million tonnes currently.
India, the world’s second-largest producer, importer, and consumer of coal, produced 777.2 million tonnes of the fuel during the year ended March 2022 and burnt over a billion tonnes.