A tenth of coal-fired plants still at risk for outages, says Crisil

Erratic supply, high import costs to hurt 20 GW of capacity

An immediate power crisis may have been averted for now, but about a tenth of India’s coal-fired thermal power plants remain in danger of shutdowns and outages due to erratic coal supplies and high prices for imported coal, rating agency Crisil said on Wednesday.

Domestic coal supplies have been erratic due to rains hampering mining operations, while non-coking coal imports have slid more than 20%. As a result, coal stocks at power plants have depleted to an average of five days’ worth of supplies.

Ankit Hakhu, Crisil Ratings director, expects global coal prices and domestic e-auction premiums to remain elevated over the next few months, rendering about 20 GW of private power generation capacity out of a total 209 GW of coal-based capacity to be ‘most vulnerable’.