New Delhi India’s electricity demand has come down with the recent drop in temperature and rainfall in North India, with the maximum power demand currently below 200 GW.
There is a short window of relief from the peak power shortfall of 5.40% or 10.77 GW on April 29, with wind and hydro power offtake, a record high power demand of 207.11 GW.
According to the Power System Operator Corporation Limited (POSOCO) data, the maximum power demand on May 23 declined from 183 GW on May 22 to 178.20 GW. On 23 May, the peak power shortfall was 270 MW.
In addition, electricity prices at power exchanges have come down substantially from their all-time high in April. In the day-to-day market on Indian Energy Exchange, the average market clearing price for May 24 was 3.54 per kilowatt hour. For May 25, the average market clearing price in the coming day’s market, although it showed a bullish trend and was at 4.93 per kilowatt hour.
During the last week of April, the day-to-day market price . was around the upper limit of 12 per kilowatt hour.
Temperatures have been falling since the rains triggered by pre-monsoon rains in Kerala and cyclone Asani in coastal states including Odisha and Andhra Pradesh a week ago. Apart from this, there was a sharp drop in temperature in Delhi-NCR on Monday due to thunderstorm and rain.
With more rain expected in some parts of the country, power demand is expected to remain subdued over the next few days.
In a tweet on Tuesday, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said, “It will rain today over North West India and over East India during next 2 days. Isolated thunderstorms/ lightning/ gusty winds over Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh & Uttarakhand. With widespread light/moderate rainfall likely.”
It has predicted isolated rains over Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, North Madhya Pradesh on Tuesday and a reduction in rainfall from Wednesday, May 25, 2022.
However, analysts said a bigger power crunch is brewing with state-owned discoms unable to stockpile coal in preparation for the monsoon months.
As on May 23, the coal stock in 173 plants tracked by the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) stood at 21.51 million tonnes, which was 32% of the required inventory of 66.49 million tonnes.
Of these, 80 plants based on domestic coal and 10 plants based on imported coal are left out of critical stock, which means 25% of the required stock.