METTUR is a 840 MW coal power station in Tamil Nadu, India. It is operated by Tamil Nadu Power Distribution Corp Ltd. Based on reported annual generation of 5,314 GWh, it can supply roughly 1.5 million homes. It ranks #424 of 2,229 India power plants by installed capacity. Commissioned in 1988, it is around 38 years old — long-established. Its modelled annual emissions are 7,725,300 t CO₂/yr (Climate TRACE), equivalent to about 1.8 million cars driven for a year. In context, coal supplies about 70.8% of India's electricity; the national grid averages 670 gCO₂/kWh (26.7% low-carbon) (2025).
Plant data: WRI Global Power Plant Database (CC BY 4.0), id IND0000265.
Known, modelled and calculated values are kept separate. Missing fields are shown as unavailable.
The public capacity above is the current source-record value. A 2026 tracker candidate lists 1,440 MW for Mettur Thermal Power Station, but it is not used as the public primary value until scope is verified (unit vs operating vs installed/project total).
Capacity claim grade: B_SCOPE_PARENT_COMPLEX - recommended action: build_parent_complex_model - confidence: not_comparable_without_scope. This follows a claim-based data model: value + scope + source + confidence, rather than silently overwriting records.
The capacity and/or fuel fields on this page include a source-backed provenance label from GEM, an official registry, Wikidata, OSM, or a cross-source match.
capacity: GEM tracker 2026 (location L100000102561); fuel: WRI source-record fuel
At 840 MW, METTUR is below the median coal plant in India (1,000 MW). Technically it is described as subcritical. Coal plants burn pulverised coal to raise high-pressure steam for a turbine; they run as baseload but are the most carbon-intensive mainstream source and the first targeted for retirement or efficiency retrofits.
Capacity comparison computed from the WRI Global Power Plant Database; fuel-type context is general engineering background.
This facility's annual emissions are roughly equivalent to:
Equivalencies via US EPA Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies; modelled emissions from Climate TRACE.
Annual generation (GWh), WRI Global Power Plant Database (CC BY 4.0).
Operated by Tamil Nadu Power Distribution Corp Ltd. All plants by this company →
This coal plant burns coal to raise high-pressure steam that spins a turbine-generator. It sits in a tropical savanna climate (Köppen Aw) — Northern Hemisphere, latitude 11.8°N — which shapes how much energy it can produce and how its output varies through the year.
Monthly mean temperature
This site has effectively no heating season (tropical/equatorial climate), so winter heat loss is not the driver here. The thermal concern shifts to year-round process heat and humidity/heat-driven corrosion of hot equipment.
Climate normals: WorldClim 2.1 (1970–2000 monthly normals, 10 arc-min, CC BY 4.0); zone: Köppen-Geiger world climate classification (Kottek et al. 2006, 0.5° grid). Degree-days & heat-demand index computed by PowerAtlas — a modelled heat-demand proxy, not a measured site figure.
For a plant’s outdoor hardware — heat-recovery steam generators (HRSG), expansion joints, valves, flanges and their insulation — the local climate sets how fast unprotected steel and coatings degrade. This site sits in a moderately corrosive environment (estimated ISO 9223 class C3 — Medium), with humidity / wetness the leading environmental stress.
Higher environmental severity is exactly where protective removable insulation pays back most: a sheltered micro-climate slows corrosion, UV and thermal-cycling damage and extends outdoor hardware service life. This is an indicative site-climate context — not a condition assessment of any specific plant or operator.
Indicative estimate via the ISO 9223:2012 informative method (atmospheric corrosivity from temperature, time-of-wetness and airborne salinity), using WorldClim climate normals, the Köppen-Geiger class and coast distance. Indicative, not a measured corrosion rate.
The #387 largest coal power plant of 716 in India by capacity.
India has 716 coal power plants in this dataset, together about 806,969 MW of capacity.
Coordinates 11.7696, 77.8138 from WRI Global Power Plant Database (CC BY 4.0). View on OpenStreetMap.
METTUR is a 840 MW source-record coal power plant in Tamil Nadu, India, commissioned in 1988.
METTUR generates about 5,314 GWh of electricity per year.
Its output is enough to supply roughly 1,518,371 homes.
METTUR is operated by Tamil Nadu Power Distribution Corp Ltd.
METTUR has modelled emissions of about 7,725,300 tonnes of CO₂ per year (Climate TRACE).
