The Great Indian Power Crisis https://www.cenfa.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/The-Great-Indian-Power-Crisis-June-2022.pdf By Soumya Dutta | June 25, 2022
the current cacophony of “coal shortage” and need for more mines to be opened or coal to be imported, have no real basis in data available with the Ministries, and yet they are pushing for importing very expensive coal by cash strapped states and their empty-coffers distribution companies (DISCOMs). This also leads one to doubt the real motives behind government responses and about the hidden-players.
there was no real shortage of coal at the coal mines or pit-heads, and the coal mining companies had enough coal stock. The statement of the Coal Minister and data from Coal India both confirm this. The Indian Railways was not running enough coal-rakes to transport these coal to the power plants which were running short, with many power plants having 4-10 days of stock at some points.
According to an analysis by Climate Risk Horizons, if India had achieved its target of 175 GW of RE power, almost the entire power supply gap could have been filled with a saving of over 44 lakh tons of coal.
It is quite clear that the current power crisis being faced by India, is not a result of the purported “Coal Shortage”, as has been highlighted in some media and by vested interest groups. Rather, it is a perfect mess of a tangle of problems not addressed in time, lack of planning and execution, absence of knowledge and anticipation of incoming situations, outright neglect sometimes, and possibly, some deeper designs by vested interest groups