CHENNAI: Electricity Minister V Senthil Balaji held a high-level meeting with top officials on Tuesday to discuss the state’s electricity demand as the summer season approaches. This comes after Tangedco’s prediction that the power demand during peak hours in mid-April may set a new record at 18,000 and surpass the current record of 17,584 MW registered last Saturday.
The meeting discussed measures to meet the anticipated electricity demand. A press release said the state’s present demand stands between 16,500 MW and 17,500 MW, which can rise from 17,000 MW to 18,100 MW in April and come down to 17,400 MW in May.
“It is expected that the demand that stood at 17,196 MW in March 2022 will increase to 18,100 MW in March 2023. Besides, the demand that stood at 17.563 MW in April 2022 will be 18,500 MW in April 2023. Similarly, the demand that was 16,750 MW in May 2022 will be 18,000 MW in May 2023,” the release added.
According to officials, to meet the peak demand of 18,500 MW, the power utility would get 8,959 MW from its own thermal and hydropower plants along with the union government’s share, 4,750 MW from wind power generation, and 2,752 MW through private purchase under long-term and short-term tenders. Additionally, Tangedco will obtain 650 MW of power from other state utilities under swap arrangements, which means the state would supply excess power during the wind season to the states in need and get back the same during summer.
Tangedco would get 1,562 MW of power through short-term tenders at a cost of Rs 8.50 per unit for March, April, and May. Through this process, the utility would avoid purchases from power exchanges, where the price stands between Rs 12 and Rs 20 per unit. This would save around Rs 1,312 crore.
The power utility has also increased its own thermal power generation from 18,535 million units (till February 2022) to 20,307 million units (till February 2023) denoting an increase of 9.5%. It has also increased in hydropower generation. A total of 266.87 lakh consumers linked their power service connection numbers with Aadhaar, and 67,275 did not complete the task, the release added.