India’s peak demand for power is expected to touch 260 gigawatt (GW) during September or October, power secretary Pankaj Agarwal said on Tuesday, in what implies an unprecedented 20% surge in such demand in just two years.
The secretary indicated the steep hike in demand might require a unscheduled revision of the National Electricity Plan (NEP)-2022-27, notified in May last year. Such plans are usually revised every five years, with a detailed plan for five years, and a perspective plan for the next five.
The power ministry, Agarwal said, is now working on the peak power demand projections to update these. “Very shortly we will be updating our National Electricity Plan,” the official said.
“We are likely to touch 260 GW. We might witness another surge (in power demand) in September or October,” Agarwal told reporters on the sidelines of a CII event. The government now expects the country’s peak power demand to touch 400 GW by 2031-32 exceeding the projected 384 GW level.
Peak demand reached 250 GW in May, breaching the last year’s peak of 243 GW registered in September 2023.
With the upcoming new units of thermal plants getting commissioned, the government is confident of meeting this demand, he added. However, analysts caution that success of the plan to augment supplies will hinge on the how quickly new thermal power projects are commissioned, even while keeping the pace of capacity addition in renewable energy, and putting in place RE storage infrastructure.
The country’s power demand has risen over 9% in terms of megawatt and by almost 11% in terms of billion units in the first quarter of the current financial year against Q1FY24, the secretary noted.
The peak power demand has been increasing very rapidly during the past few years owing to the growth in per capita consumption of the country. The peak demand has increased at an average of almost 7% in the last five years from 184 GW registered in 2019-20, as per data from the power ministry. In FY24, the peak demand witnessed an increase of 12.5% at 243 GW compared from FY23.
“The peak demand of 250 GW which we met this year, is estimated to reach 384 GW by 2031-32. This may easily cross 400 GW considering the way in which demand has increased in some states in the past two years,” Agarwal said. He estimates a total installed power capacity of 900 GW by 2031-32 to meet the projected demand, as outlined in NEP.
Agarwal also highlighted that to meet the vision of 2031-32, the financial viability of discoms need to be improved along with integration of renewable energy. “We are still sitting on accumulated losses of more than Rs 6.5 trillion as of March 2023,” he said. “The annual losses and cash losses are at about Rs 67,000 crore.”
To be able to meet the projected high demand for power, the government has taken several steps including extension of blending of imported coal at domestic coal based plants at 4% till October 15.
The power ministry has also extended the Section 11 of the Electricity Act, 2003 till September, guiding all imported coal based power plants to operate and generate power to their full capacity and expedition of new capacities in order to meet the peak demand estimated at 260 GW. In line with this, the coal ministry has also stepped up its efforts with increased coal production by public sector undertakings in order to ensure adequate supply of coal to thermal power plants.
