Thermal power plants hit by coal shortage. What’s the way out?

Sanjib Mitra,  Country Head and Sr VP – Transformer Division, Electrotherm (India)

Coal remains a crisis worldwide as mining remains a challenge all through. Not only this, also if we think about usage of natural resources we must think on the ecology part of life science on our mother earth and try to balance with societal requirement and environment friendliness keeping future of the plant in mind. As a responsible living being we should not use the natural resources in abundance because future generations will then find the plant in less liveable conditions for sure. Renewable energy is the alternate energy input which need more encouragement along with biofuels and other alternate energy like nuclear power plant. Right utilisation of energy curve is the most important point here to discuss.

We must allow thermal or nuclear energy for the base energy resource for any city, town or industrial stations in a country and during peak demand hours the smart system to switch on the reserved capacity along with Bio or renewable energy to minimize usage of minerals available on the earth. This way a complete ecological balance will come in force with will keep the mother earth green, clean and a planet with sustainable growth prospect.

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Essentially, this is a part of the lifecycle chain which has occurred, and it will occur in future as well. There are several factors which contributes to coal shortage, which is much complex than merely coal being a reserved-commodity. However, the economies today are dividing their power-generation portfolio quite efficiently. With a piece of the pie with renewal energy (wind, hydro, solar etc.), non-renewal energy and alternative energy or fuels; this seems to be the most effective way to balance power requirement. Just as they say in economics, not to put all the eggs in a single basket, the same principle governs here.

Only with such kind of diverse pool, will we be able to accommodate ourselves through situation (certain and unforeseen, both) and can ensure reliable power generation.