The Power Ministry has directed imported coal-based (ICB) power plants to run at optimum capacity till June 30, 2025, in anticipation of India’s rising power consumption, which hits a high during the summer months, from April to June.
Earlier, the Ministry had directed ICB plants to run at full capacity till April 30, which has now been extended till June 30, 2025, as has been the regular practice in the past few years.
Sources said the mandate has now become a regular practice for April-June as well as during August-October when power demand rises due to hot and humid weather pushing up the requirement for cooling.
According to the National Power Portal, India’s domestic coal based (DCB) power plants with around 194 gigawatt (GW) capacity have domestic coal stocks of 53.34 million tonnes (mt) and imported stock of 9.75 lakh tonnes (lt) on April 30, 2025. Their per day consumption is around 2.76 mt per day.
Plants capacity
ICB plants with almost 18 GW capacity and a daily consumption of 1.82 lt per day, has a domestic stock of 36,300 tonnes and imported stock of 2.34 mt. Six ICB plants have critical stocks.
India’s thermal coal imports rose to a 10-month high in March 2025 with the power sector stocking up supplies for the blistering summer season ahead with peak electricity demand (day) already hitting more than 230 GW.
According to global real-time data and analytics provider Kpler, India’s purchases of foreign thermal coal, usually procured by the power sector, rose by 10 per cent m-o-m to 14.16 mt provisionally. However, the imports declined by more than 2 per cent on an annual basis.
The higher import requirement also reflects on the government’s direction to ICB power plants to run capacities at optimum levels.