With the country reaching record levels of electricity demand, the Centre has written to all states to take urgent steps to manage the demand and supply situation.
While summer spikes in demand have been a regular feature of the electricity market in India, this time is different because of both the intensity and aggravating circumstances.
Unlike last year, when peak demand was at 212 GW, this year, peak demand has already touched 241 GW, the Ministry of Power pointed out in a letter addressed to All Additional Chief Secretaries and power utilities on September 5, 2023.
“The growth of around 23% in peak demand in August 2023 was one of the highest in the world. In the month of August, for seven days, the daily energy consumption was more than 5 billion units per day and for 16 days, the demand was more than 220 GW," the Joint Secretary quoted in the letter.
So far, what has saved the day for the government has been that the peak has come during daytime, its solar hours, when the nearly 75 GW of solar power plants is working at its full capacity.
However, given the lack of storage facilities, it's a different story during non-solar hours, particularly, evenings.
“The demand has touched record levels even during non-solar hours. It touched 218.4 GW on 1.09.2023. The entire onus of meeting non-solar hours demand falls upon the coal fired generation", the letter said.
Hydro underwater
What is making the situation especially worrying this year — the aggravating circumstance — is the poor rainfall India has got so far.
This has put a question mark on the nearly 45 GW of power that India could generate from the hydro sector to compensate for the decline in solar power generation when the sun is not shining.
"The fall in monsoon has resulted in depleted reservoir levels especially in the Southern region leading to suboptimal hydro generation. The maximum hydro generation achieved this year is 40 GW. The projections for the month of September are also not encouraging," stated the letter.
The poor rainfall is being linked to the El Nino weather phenomenon. Monsoon trends in India in the past hundred years suggest that severe drought and drought-like conditions have always occurred in El Nino years.
Meanwhile, other sources of energy, such as wind, can also not be depended on to offset any shortfall in hydropower production in the coming months, the Ministry warned.
“A very similar trend is observed in the case of wind generation, which is historically high from June to September. In contrast to the installed capacity of 43.9 GW, variable wind power output is now down to only 2-3 GW," noted the Joint Secretary.
Gas based generation is also low due to availability issues; a maximum generation of around 8.7 GW was observed against the total installed capacity of 25 GW.
The lack of sufficient monsoon is likely to further deplete the hydro and wind generation, the letter warned.
The Ministry is taking several steps to meet the increased demand, such as measures to ensure maximum generation capacity, monitor and coordinate with Ministries of Coal and Railways on a regular basis, and instruct GENCOS to import coal to prevent load shedding. The Ministry is also making additional arrangements for gas for running gas based stations from GAIL with tenders for advance procurement for coming months. The reservoir levels of hydro stations are also regularly monitored for optimum utilization of water.
To ensure the availability of electricity to all consumers and to meet the anticipated growth in demand, the Centre asked state governments to shift the agricultural load to solar hours, expedite all planned maintenance of the generating stations, and supply excess power to needy states.