Indian Railways, a prime supplier of coal to all Power Houses

New Delhi: Indian Railways has been a prime supplier of Coal to all Power Houses and has taken substantive measures in the year 2021-22 and the current month of April to augment the coal supply to Powerhouses.

During the year 2021-22 Indian Railways has augmented the transportation of Coal through Railways by a record 111 Million tonnes and loaded a record 653 Million Tonnes of coal as compared to 542 million tonnes in the previous year i.e. a growth of 20.4 %.

Further, during the period Sept-21 to Mar-22 loading of coal to the power sector was augmented by 32% in just 2 quarters.

In April 2022, IR has taken many steps to prioritize the loading of coal to the power sector which has led to an increase in the supply of coal by more than 10 % within one week time.

This improvement has been possible due to various measures undertaken by Indian Railways some of which are listed below :

The movement of Coal trains have been prioritized and each and every train is being intensively monitored during the entire cycle from Loading to movement and finally unloading.

Through this prioritization and monitoring of the Transit time of coal trains to long distance, Power has been reduced significantly by 12-36% for critical power plants.

Indian railways have prioritized the movement of coal to long distance Powerhouses as well which is reflected in the fact that the average lead of coal trains has increased by 7 % in the last 5 days as compared to the average leads of 1st to 10th April.

Despite this increase in the average lead of coal trains the time taken between two successive loading of the same rake for these stocks has been reduced by 10%.

With these operational innovations, Indian Railways has augmented the supply of coal trains to Powerhouses as well as has loaded more coal rakes on a sustained basis.

Indian Railways is fully Geared up and has mobilized all resources to ensure that a sustained high level of Coal supply is maintained to Powerhouses and is committed to lift all domestic coal that is brought to the sidings /good sheds by the Coal companies and imported coal brought to the ports by the power generating companies.