Coal India allows thermal plants to trade surplus power in open market

State-run Coal India Limited (CIL) on Thursday announced that thermal power plants using its linkage coal under long- and medium-term fuel supply agreements (FSAs) are now allowed to sell un-requisitioned surplus (URS) power on power exchanges and in the open market.

Earlier, the sale of power generated through such FSAs was confined to power purchase agreements (PPAs). Under the previous policy framework, electricity produced using CIL’s linkage coal could not be traded in the open market, regardless of whether it was surplus to the PPA requirements, the coal mining major said in a BSE filing.

“In the spirit of the revised SHAKTI (Scheme for Harnessing and Allocating Koyala Transparently in India) policy, CIL has done away with the earlier provision of restricting the sale of power in the open market. This applies evenly to all existing as well as future long and medium term power FSAs and extends to all the power generators - Central and State Gencos, independent power plants,” the company said in its statement.