IANS | 03 Apr, 2024
The government has stepped up its efforts to ensure that the
electricity demand in the upcoming peak summer season is met in the
country without any outages.
At a meeting held on Tuesday,
Minister for Power and New & Renewable Energy, R.K. Singh, reviewed
the power capacity status of all the thermal power plants experiencing
partial outages to ensure maximum availability of thermal capacity.
He
has also directed that the planned maintenance of thermal plants be
shifted from the summer months to the monsoon season so that more power
is available during the peak season.
This is expected to make available as much as 1.7 GW of additional power in April and 6 GW-9 GW in June.
The
Minister also held a meeting with the power generation companies and
reviewed the status of 5.2 GW of non-operational thermal capacity.
Besides these, capacity additions in coal, hydro, nuclear, solar, and wind would be monitored to expedite their commissioning.
The Minister also emphasised the need for ensuring zero load-shedding during the summer season.
At
a meeting held in the third week of March, it was stressed that
adequate planning should be done by all the stakeholders to prevent a
situation in which one state has surplus power while another state faces
power shortages.
It has also been decided to explore the
possibility of harnessing any surplus power, which may be available with
captive generating stations.
All thermal power generating
stations have been directed to offer their un-requisitioned / surplus
power in power exchanges, as mandated by the recently notified rules. It
has been directed that compliance needs to be monitored regularly and
notices issued for violation of directions.
The NTPC raised the issue of infeasible power scheduling by the various Discoms.
The
Minister directed that uniform technical minimum loading of 55 per cent
of unit capacity may be mandated for all coal-based power generators as
has been implemented for Inter-State Generating Stations and Regional
Load Despatch Centres. This is aimed at ensuring technical minimum
conditions while issuing schedules and for the safety and reliability of
the grid.
It has also been decided that, considering the energy
provided by imported coal-based power plants will also be directed to
keep up production under Section 11 till 30th September, 2024.
For
the upcoming summer season, the Indian Metrological Department (IMD)
has projected higher-than-normal maximum and minimum temperatures across
the country, except over some isolated areas of Northwest, Northeast,
Central and Peninsular India.
The electricity demand would also
hence be higher than in previous years, which is reflected also in the
rising trend of peak demand in recent months, during both solar hours
and non-solar hours.
The peak energy demand has been growing in
recent years, but the expansion in power generation has also increased.
Relative to the year 2022-23, the energy requirement grew by 7.5 per
cent in 2023-24 and the energy availability grew by 7.8 per cent,
resulting in a reduction in total energy shortfall from 0.5 per cent in
2022-23 to 0.2 per cent in 2023-24.
As regards coal-based
electricity alone, the total energy generated grew in 2023-24 by 10 per
cent relative to 2022-23. Out of this, the energy generated from
domestic coal-based power plants grew by 6.5 per cent while that
generated from imported-coal-based power plants grew by as much as 104
per cent.