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Adding Renewable Power at the Cost of Descaling Coal-Fired Power Plants

In India average CUF of coal fired plants are around 51% and is predicted by one of the research firm that CUF would be reduce by 35-40% by 2022. Addition of renewable capacities may force fossil based energy to be operated at low CUF. Increase in capacity addition and intermittent nature of renewable will require flexible operations of coal fired plants that usually takes long time to start and stop. This would also need retrofitting of plants equipment, supplemented with good quality of coal. Operating practices of coal fired plants also needs to change, requiring additional capex thus increasing cost of power generated from coal. Impair start-stop of operation of plant will on the other hand will reduce life of asset and reliability.