Why in News?

• Ministry of Power launched PRAKASH (Power Rail Koyla Availability through Supply Harmony)

About PRAKASH (Power Rail Koyla Availability through Supply Harmony) Portal:

• The Portal aims at bringing better coordination for coal supplies among all stakeholders viz – Ministry of Power, Ministry of Coal, Coal India, Railways and power utilities.
• The Portal is designed to help in mapping and monitoring entire coal supply chain for power plants, viz:
  • Coal Stock at supply end (mines),
  • coal quantities/ rakes planned,
  • coal quantity in transit and
  • coal availability at power generating station.

Benefits of Portal to the Stakeholders:

• The portal makes available following information on a single platform:
  • Coal company will be able to track stocks and the coal requirement at power stations for effective production planning.
  • Indian Railways will plan to place the rakes as per actual coal available at siding and stock available at power stations.
  • Power stations can plan future schedule by knowing rakes in pipe line and expected time to Reach.
  • Stock at power generating station
  • Ministry of Power /Ministry of Coal/ Central Electricity Authority/ Power System Operation Corporation (POSOCO) can review overall availability of coal at thermal power plants in different regions.
• PRAKASH Portal is developed by NTPC and sources data from different stakeholders such as Central Electricity Authority (CEA), Centre for Railway Information System (CRIS) and coal companies. All reports are available in PDF/Excel format. However, to present information in a user friendly method, the Portal gives graphical representation of reports with details shown on the map of India.

• Currently, the Portal will make available four reports as detailed below:
  • Daily Power Plant Status: This report gives Station data related to power generation, coal receipt, consumption and stock. Report can be generated utility wise, state wise and sector wise (default utility-wise).
  • Periodic Power Plant Status: Report gives Station data related to power generation, coal receipt, consumption and stock for selected period. Coal materialisation based on dispatch by coal company is available.
  • Plant Exception Report: This report gives materialisation and rakes in pipeline through Rail.
  • Coal Dispatch Report: Report gives coal subsidiary wise dispatch for particular period. It also gives source wise details of coal dispatch. Dispatch trend is also shown. Plant wise and siding wise details are available.

Present Mechanism:

• Present mechanism to review coal supply situation consists of an inter-ministerial group which has officials from Ministries of Power, Coal, Railways, CEA, power utilities and coal companies.
• This group holds weekly meetings to review coal supply situation as well as railway logistics.
• It was observed that this mechanism faced several issues such as scattered information, correctness of data from different organizations, timely availability of data etc. This often led to difficulties in decision making
• To address such situations, Ministry of Power asked CEA for establishment of a transparent mechanism to monitor the coal availability at loading site (CIL,SCCL), placement of rakes by Railways (CRIS) and availability of coal at power stations (NTPC / DVC /State utilities) and also directed NTPC to facilitate CEA for portal development.