Pandemic brings down annual power demand by 2% in Andhra Pradesh

VIJAYAWADA: The annual energy demand in 2020-21 year, which saw different consumption patterns due to Covid-19 crisis, registered a dip of about two per cent as against the expected compounded annual growth rate of five to seven percent. The annual demand for FY 21 stood at 61,886 million units (MU) lower than FY 20 and FY 19 consumption of 63,240 MU and 62,495 MU respectively.

Although initial projects showed that the annual demand would be much lower, the increased economic activity after the pandemic-imposed lockdown, higher agricultural power consumption, soaring temperatures in the last quarter of the fiscal year and other reasons resulted in marginal recovery in consumption by the end of the year, according to the officials.  In fact, towards the end of the financial year, the demand kept shooting up and has reached an all time high. The highest unrestricted peak demand in the year and also ever soared to 10,724 MW on March 11. 

Meanwhile, the power demand in the state continues to increase with the maximum temperatures being on the higher side. In the first week of April, the power utilities handled over 1,550 MU of energy with the per-day average shooting past 225 MU.