No shortage of coal at power plants : Govt

There is no shortage of coal at the power generation plants across the nation, Parliament was informed Wednesday.

In a written reply to the Lok Sabha, Coal Minister Piyush Goyal said that "there is no shortage of coal for the power plants of the country".

As per the report of the Central Electricity Authority (CEA), during the April-November period of the ongoing fiscal, total cost-based generation has been 99.16 per cent of the programme generation with a growth of 5.5 per cent over the year-ago period.

"This has been possible due to increased supply of coal to the power sector," it said.

In a separate reply, the minister said that as per CEA report, the number of non-pithead super critical/critical plants has come down from 18 as on June 1, 2018 to 13 as on December 11, 2018.

"Criticality of a power plant is not a function of coal supply alone and depends on multiple factors, including installed capacity of power plants and scheduling of power from these plants based on merit order dispatch," the minister said.