KOCHI: With soaring daytime temperatures leading to warmer nights, power consumption in the state is rising at an alarming rate, leaving the KSEB scrambling to avoid load shedding.
Daily consumption crossed the 100-million-unit-mark for the first time in the state’s history on April 13 last year. This season has seen multiple breaches, causing concern to the state power entity, which depends on purchases from the national grid and the pricey private sector to meet 80% of its demand.
Consumption touched 103.86 million units (MU) on Tuesday, breaking the previous record of 102.99 MU set on April 19, 2023. The peak load during night hours has been rising on a daily basis, thereby breaking records, for the past two weeks. The previous record of 5,024 MW fell on March 12 when peak load touched 5,031 MW. Since then, the peak load has seen a gradual increase and a new record of 5,303 MW was set at 10.29pm on Tuesday.
According to officials, there is an increasing trend of mostly middle-class households installing air conditioners, which has led to a steep rise in power consumption. The electricity board has been purchasing around 10 MU of power daily from the real-time market at Rs 10 a unit for the past two months, which is adding to its financial woes. With summer temperatures in north India also rising there will be a scarcity of power in the real-time market and KSEB will be forced to purchase power at exorbitant rates -- Rs 16 to Rs 19 a unit, at prevailing rates -- from private entities from the first week of April.