The country’s nearly a quarter of its total nuclear, thermal and hydropower capacity is Closed at a time India’s demand for electricity is growing at the fastest rate over the last few decades.
low fuel generation
As per the Central Electricity Authorities’ operational Monitoring of Performance report about 72,074.14 megawatts (MW) comprised of nuclear, thermal, and hydropower were in operation on April 20.
These figures represent nearly 25 percent of the monitoring capacity 289,581.24 MW.
The CEA’s capacity that is monitored includes hydro, thermal along with nuclear units, but not 110 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy.
In the first week of the month, capacity removed was 66,534.31 milliwatts.
Additionally, the absence of fuel has caused more units.
Why Does This Happen?
The director-general of the Independent Power Producers Association of India (IPPAI), Harry Dhaul stated that “Mainly the power outages result from the shortage of coal at power stations. There isn’t enough coal available through Coal India and there is an insufficient infrastructure for transport. Another issue is that some discoms have been delaying payments and generators aren’t able to purchase enough coal to power their plants,” in an interview.
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Only 9,744.85 MW are off the grid due to planned maintenance, out of the total of 72,074.14 units not operational on 20 April.
In accordance with the CEA it is estimated that the CEA estimates that a capability that is 38,826.20 MW is currently under a “forced” shutdown.
While at the same time another 23,503.09 MW are closed due to various reasons.
The power plants mentioned above close down for maintenance each year. is scheduled in advance, keeping the demand cycle that is in mind.
“Forced” shutdown refers to power plants that shut down due to unanticipated reasons that relate to the lack of fuel or the inability of state utilities to purchase high-cost power sources, technological issues or malfunctions in plant equipment.
Low Coal Supply Affecting Power Generation
In the face of a shortage of coal, Indian power generating units have been stricken.
However, the demand for industrial products has been extremely high, and the an increase in temperature has accelerated the demand for household goods.
As more than 86 out of 150 power stations that were running using domestic coal were operating at critically low levels of coal on April 20.
In just two days, five units fell below the critical level from April 18 to April 20,, making the situation worse.
The most important reason is the lack in coal coming by Coal India Ltd along with the absence of rakes to transport coal.
In addition, 11 coal-based power plants imported from China were rated as having critical levels of coal.
On April 12the Minister of Power and New & Renewable Energy RK Singh had a discussion about the fact that 798 MW of capacity from ICB plants was inactive creating a greater need for local coal, consequently increasing the pressure on logistics of the national coal supply. The minister was in a meeting with coal-based imported (ICB) power stations.
They have also asked coal-based coal plants from abroad to begin operational in time.
It is also recommended that power generators look to purchase coal to blend at least 10 percent to ease the strain on the national coal supply.
