Performance Analysis of Coal Fired Power Plants in India

With over 150GW of installed capacity and around 723.8 BUs of electricity generation during 2008-09, India remains the 5th largest consumer of electricity in the world. Coal fired power plants account for more than half of the installed capacity and caters to more than 65% of the power demand. Against the prevalent practice of ratio analysis being used for the performance estimation, the study uses non-parametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to estimate the relative technical efficiency and scale efficiencies of coal-based power plants in India. It is found that the average technical efficiency of these plants is 83.2% with as many as 38 plants below the mean level. Distribution of the less efficient plants in different sectors, regions, their peer groups and the return to scale properties are analyzed