India is yet to add new coal-fired power plant capacity in the ongoing fiscal, but has lost another old and inefficient unit in December, 2022. This came after Damodar Vally Corporation (DVC) made a decision to retire the last running unit of its Durgapur power station located in West Bengal.
The power plant was initially built with a nameplate capacity of 500 mega-watt (MW) comprising of four units: Unit-1, 2 of 57 MW each, Unit-3 of 140 MW and Unit-4 of 210 MW. Out of these, the first three units already retired. The remaining 210 MW unit also followed suit which was commissioned way back in September, 1982.
Before this, Unit-7 of Obra power station having 94 MW capacity, owned by Uttar Pradesh electricity board, was retired in October, 2022.
The country has revised capacity addition target for thermal plants to 6,350 MW in Financial Year 2023 (FY23). However, development of ongoing projects has been marred by Covid and other disruptions related to technology needs and environmental norms.
Meanwhile, after the retirement of Durgapur plant, the installed capacity of coal-based plants in the country has dipped to 203,775.5 MW at the end of December, which was accessed at 204,079.5 MW in April 2022, as per data provided by Central Electricity Authority.
Coal-fired plants register higher PLF
Notwithstanding the sluggish capacity addition rate, the coal-fired plants account for almost half of the total installed power generation capacity.
In fact, the decommissioning of some utilities is helping the coal power plant fleet to achieve higher plant load factor (PLF) at a time when the country had witnessed strong power demand.
The PLF is one of the performance parameters of a power plant that indicates the degree of plant capacity utilisation for a period of time.
During April-December, 2022, the coal-fired plants registered plant load factor (PLF) of 63.27% — which is at an 8-year high when assessed for April-December period.
In FY22, coal-based plants having combined capacity of 1,580 MW retired. Meanwhile, capacity of 1,500 MW was changed to captive facility, hence were removed from the fleet.
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