Demand for electricity again breaks record: Union power minister RK Singh

India’s electricity demand touched a record high of 211,856MW on Friday, making it the third consecutive day when power consumption breached previous records, Union power minister RK Singh said.
In an outstanding consecutive streak, the maximum all-India demand met on June 10, 2022, was 211,856 MW at 1447 hours, breaking the previous high of 210,793 MW recorded just a day before (Thursday),” Singh said.

The previous national peak power demand was recorded on Wednesday at 209,809MW. The highest demand until last year was 200,570MW, recorded on July 7, 2021. This year, the government is projecting the peak electricity demand to go up to 215,000MW once monsoon sets in large parts, increasing humidity levels and usage of air conditioners, an official said, asking not to be named.

Many states in the country have faced hours of outages during the current summer because of an unrelenting surge in power demand due to a heatwave, rapid economic recovery after the Covid-19 pandemic, and a shortage of coal to generate power.

The situation is expected to aggravate further in the monsoon season if cash-strapped power producers do not have adequate coal stock. Generally, coal off-take from mines gets affected during the monsoon.

The shortfall in the peak power demand on Wednesday was 936 MW – better than the national peak shortfall of 10,778 MW recorded on April 28, when the peak power demand was 204,653MW.

India has been suffering from extreme heat conditions this summer, with many experts linking the early onset of an intense summer to the climate crisis. The steep electricity use caused widespread power cuts in April, as the authorities scrambled to manage demand amid dwindling coal supplies.

Data from the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) showed that on Thursday as well, 80 of 150 power plants running on domestic coal had critically low coal levels. Of the 15 plants designed on imported coal, eight were marked “critical”. Another eight plants were not in operation due to the ongoing coal shortage.
However, the situation in June, so far, has been better than the crisis faced in March-April, when up to 90 of the 150 plants running on domestic coal had critically low stocks.

The coal situation is also getting slightly better, with the government heavily pushing for coal imports to lower the burden on domestic coal.