Coal availability holds back thermal production.
Electricity generation in the country increased by 7.02 per cent in the month of June, mainly powered by availability of natural gas from Reliance Industries’ Krishna Godavari (KG) basin, which helped gas turbine-based power production improve by about 36 per cent, as compared to June last year.
KG gas helped overall thermal power generation to improve by over 12 per cent. Nuclear and hydro power generation had a decline of over 9 per cent during the month, according to data from the Central Electricity Authority.
CEA said gas turbine-based actual power generation in June was 7,165 million units, which was 35.9 per cent more than the 5,271 MU in June 2008. India produced 62,646 MU of power in June, against a target of 63,497 MU. Coal-based power generation for the month was also up by 7.94 per cent, to 41,094 MU.
Power generation during April–June has been 98.9 per cent of the target and registered a growth rate at 5.76 per cent with respect to generation during the corresponding period last year. In the three-month period of April to June, gas turbine-based actual power generation rose by 20.6 per cent to 21,307 MU (17,660 MU earlier). Overall thermal power generation for the three months was up by 9.01 per cent, at 1,58,667 MU, compared with 1,45,551 MU in the corresponding previous year’s quarter.
“The higher growth of thermal generation was due to increased generation at gas-based projects, due to gas availability from KG-6 basin. The gas-based generation registered a growth rate of 36.47 per cent during June 2009 and about 19.2 per cent during the quarter April–June 2009,” said CEA in its report.
CEA noted that coal-based thermal generation in the country during the first quarter was constrained, as actual coal supplies to thermal power stations was 87 per cent of the need, which resulted in generation loss of 988 MU up to May 2009 at various stations of Maharashtra and National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) plants. Out of 78 thermal stations, 30 power stations had critically short stocks, of which 11 stations had a ‘super-critical’ stock position of less than four days. The total coal stock at thermal stations was 11.06 million tonnes against a desired stock of 22 mt.
The energy generation from nuclear power stations during the three-month period exceeded the targets and achieved a growth rate of 7.1 per cent over the generation during the corresponding period last year. However, the plant load factor (PLF) achieved was 46.5 per cent, lower than the target of 47.36 per cent during the period.
There was a decline of hydro power of about 10 per cent during the quarter, mainly due to low water availability at the hydro stations. The actual energy generation from the stations during June was about 3.4 per cent less than the target for the month. Less than normal rainfall in the catchment areas of reservoirs in the southern, western and eastern parts of the country esulted in lower levels of water storage than expected.
