Hyderabad: Facing a shortage of coal for thermal power generation in the country, the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) has issued guidelines for maintaining coal stocks, supply of coal to thermal plants, and daily stock reviews.
CEA said an inter-ministerial sub group has been constituted by the infrastructure constraints review committee, headed by joint secretary (coal), with representatives of power, coal, railways, and shipping ministries, CEA, Coal India, Singareni Collieries and NTPC. The sub group will discuss the coal supply position every week to ensure there is supply of coal to power plants that have lower coal stocks.
The CEA monitors the daily coal stock position of all 112 coal-based thermal power plants. Coal is supplied to these plants based on the plant load factor (PLF). The daily coal report shows the position of the coal stock at the plant and the number of days it will run the plant as per the consumption pattern. The report highlights plants having critical and super critical stocks of coal.
As per the extant policy of the coal ministry, the supply of coal is made to a thermal plant as per the Annual Contracted Quantity (ACQ), for which a Fuel Supply Agreement (FSA) has been signed between the power plant and the coal company. CEA said that for plants established before 2009, the ACQ under FSA is based on the average coal consumption of the plant, and for post-2009 plants, the ACQ under FSA is based on coal requirement at 85 per cent of plant load factor.
The coal is supplied by the coal companies with minimum commitment level (trigger level) and the trigger level for pre-2009 plants is 90 per cent of ACQ, while for post-2009 plants it is 75 per cent of ACQ.
Hydel power operations may be integrated
To ensure optimum utilisation of hydel power, the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) has constituted a committee that will propose some method of integrating the operations of reservoirs on rivers in the country.
The member secretary of CEC is the chairman of the committee, which will consist of representatives from the Central Water Commission (CWC), state electricity generating companies (Gencos) and state energy departments.
The committee will meet at least once every month and should submit the report within three months.
