Coal India on Saturday said power plants need to inform the subsidiaries of the miner their programme for fuel sourcing to avoid any shortage during peak demand.

The peak power demand, which is the highest supply in a day, reached a record 187.3GW on January 22, 2021, surpassing the previous high of 185.82GW on January 20.

“If this continues, we could expect our supplies to the power sector going up. Power plants need to submit a programme to avoid any shortage as demand has started peaking,” said a senior CIL official.

Of the 3.906 billion units (BU) generated, coal fired generation accounted for 3.072 billion units.

The average coal-based power generation per day was 2.795 BU till January 22, which breached the 3BU mark on Friday morning.

This increased power demand has prompted the public sector miner to ask power plants to programme their offtake. Around 63 million tonnes of coal is stocked up at the pitheads, which Coal India officials said would help in meeting any surge in demand of the dry fuel.

The public sector miner is focussing to ramp up its supplies to pithead-based power plants. Coal transportation cost to pithead-based power plants is comparably lower than plants at longer distances, making the landed cost of coal lower.

Coal India’s offtake to the power sector was 117.8mt during the third quarter ended December 2020, against 116.07mt in the corresponding period a year ago.