New Delhi: A number of important steps have been taken in the Government, in the Coal India Limited (CIL) and Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL) to monitor and augment coal dispatches to the power houses. Some of the steps taken are:
- Coal stocks at the power plants are monitored constantly on the basis of daily CEA reports, which form the basis for CIL to advice its subsidiary companies to plan the movement of rakes, with specific reference to critical/supercritical plants, in coordination with the Zonal railways.
- In addition to the monitoring mechanism available at coal companies and CIL, coal supplies to Power Utility Sector is monitored regularly by an inter-ministerial sub-group comprising representatives of Ministry of Power, Ministry of Coal, Ministry of Railways, Central Electricity Authority, Ministry of Shipping, NITI Aayog, CIL etc. This sub-group has been meeting periodically, at times twice every week, in order to take various operational decisions for meeting any contingent situations relating to Power Sector including critical coal stock position for power plants.
- A committee of Secretary (Coal), Secretary (Power) and Member (Traffic), Railway Board has been jointly reviewing the coal transportation and supply on a regular basis.
- Comprehensive monitoring has been done for coal movement through rakes from CIL sidings, Washery sidings and Goods sheds.
- There has been close monitoring of turnaround time of rakes at the loading and unloading ends.
- An Innovative Monitoring Control Cell has been established in order to monitor supply related issues of the Power Houses and provide regular feedback to the MoC/CIL authorities.
- In order to meet the coal requirement of thermal Power Plants, CIL has offered coal through road mode from the available pithead stock to those Plants which are located within 50 Kms to 60 Kms from the nearest mines. As a result, power plants located within 50 Kms to 60 Kms have taken coal to fulfill their immediate coal requirement.
- Coal supplies to Power Sector from CIL have grown by 20%, 19%, 17%, 9% and 3% during the months of August-2017, September-2017, October-2017, November-2017 and December-2017 respectively over coal supplies during corresponding months of the last year.
To improve coal supplies to power plants, Indian Railways have augmented rakes availability for loading of coal to power plants. Turnaround time of rakes at loading end has improved. These efforts and close monitoring have resulted in increase in coal supplies to power plants from the level of 219 rakes per day from CIL sidings in September, 2017 to 270.6 rakes per day in March, 2018. Besides the rail projects which have been undertaken by the Railways, CIL has collaborated with the Indian Railways to undertake construction of railway lines on deposit basis and in the States of Jharkhand, Odisha and Chhattisgarh by formation of Joint Ventures. There are 14 rail projects which will augment coal evacuation and these are regularly monitored in the Ministry.
This information was laid in the House today in response to a question in Lok Sabha.
