India staring at power crisis with coal stocks down to days

NEW DELHI (AP) — An energy crisis is looming over India as coal supplies grow perilously low, adding to challenges for a recovery in Asia’s third largest economy after it was wracked by the pandemic.

Supplies across the majority of coal-fired power plants in India have dwindled to just days worth of stock.

Federal Power Minister R. K. Singh told the Indian Express newspaper this week that he was bracing for a “trying five to six months.”

“I can’t say I am secure … With less than three days of stock, you can’t be secure,” Singh said.

The shortages have stoked fears of potential black-outs in parts of India, where 70% of power is generated from coal. Experts say the crunch could upset renewed efforts to ramp up manufacturing.

Power cuts and shortages over the years have subsided in big cities, but are fairly common in some smaller towns.

Out of India’s 135 coal plants, 108 were facing critically low stocks, with 28 of them down to just one day’s worth of supply, according to power ministry data released on Wednesday, the most recently available.

On average, coal supplies at power plants had fallen to about four days worth of stock as of the weekend, the ministry said in a statement. That's a sharp plunge from 13 days in August.

Power consumption in August jumped by nearly 20% from the same month in 2019, before the pandemic struck, the power ministry said.

“Nobody expected economic growth to revive like this and for energy demand to shoot up so quickly,” said Vibhuti Garg, an energy economist at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

The shortfalls in supply were worsened by flooding of mines and other disruptions from unusually heavy rains, Garg said.

India mostly relies on domestically mined coal....