Piyush Goyal calls down on concerns of fuel shortages in power plants

No power plant is facing fuel shortages, especially those fired by coal and that off-take by power plants has grown 8-9 per cent toll October, Union power minister Piyush Goyal has said. 

The minister also claimed that none of the thermal power plants has reported any loss of generation due to a coal supply shortage. "Coal stock at power plants has been sufficient for operations and none of the power plants has reported critical/supercritical coal stock position," the minister told PTI late Saturday evening. 

He said national miner Coal India has supplied 22 million tonnes more fuel to power plants during April-October this fiscal than what it had supplied in the same seven months period a year ago. Coal off-take by thermal plants has been growing at 8-9 per cent, he added. 

Goyal, who is also the railway minister, was here last evening to dedicate the first railway university to the nation at the Pratapsingh Palace here. A senior Gujarat State Electricity Company official said thermal plants in the state have sufficient coal stock and have been running at full capacity since Diwali days. 

It can be recalled that coal-fired power plants located in Wanakbori, Gandhinagar and Ukai in the state were facing severe coal shortages in September and October and were running at less than a day's stock and were on the verge of shuttering them. 

During those months, the state was getting only one-fourth of its demand just four rakes of coal supplies a day from the committed 12 rakes, forcing the state to import more coal from Indonesia, leading to a 40 paise spike in per unit cost for end consumers. But the supply is yet to normalise as the present daily quantity is only 8 rakes and not 12 rakes, state officials admitted.

(With inputs from agencies.)