Chetan Chauhan
New Delhi: Some of the Indian states are witnessing worst power crisis in six years as electricity demand has increased to all time high due to intense heat wave even as power plants are scrambling for coal, the dominant fuel to generate electricity.
Power distribution companies expect the situation to worsen next month when the India Meteorological Department (IMD) has predicted a rise by temperature by 2-3 degrees Celsius if the coal supplies to power plant does not improve.
Most states have blamed inability of rakes to supply coal from mines and increase in price of imported coal due to Russia-Ukraine war has reduced international supplies. Power generation from gas based power plants is also less because of three-fold increase in international gas prices in the past six months, officials said.
The heat wave conditions have resulted in temperatures touching 47 degrees Celsius in several parts of the country on Friday and April is set to be one of the hottest April since 1951, Till April 27, the average maximum temperature for the month was 12 highest.
With the temperatures rising across India, the peak power demand has risen by up to 50% in some states such as Punjab. As compared to last year, the overall electricity demand is India has risen by eight percent.
On Thursday, the power ministry said that it supplied 202,000 MW of power with a shortfall of about 10,000 MW. The power ministry is accounting for a very few power cuts due to shortage of electricity supply and have said that most of the outages are due to local technical faults, hinting at the weak power distribution network.
“With the demand rising and hot weather, the probability of electricity infrastructure heating up and caving in is very high,” said Debashish Mishra, a specialist on energy with international consultant firm Deloitte.

Source : hindustan times