Ministry of Power takes steps for meeting the increased power demand during April-May 2023
The average growth of energy requirement in the country for the year 2023-24 viz-a-viz year 2022-23 has been estimated as 4.9 %. The estimated growth of energy requirement for the State of Rajasthan during the year 2023-24 w.r.t. actual energy requirement during 2022-23 is 5%.
The months of April, 2023 and May, 2023 have been projected as high demand period. During the current year 2023-24, the peak demand is expected to be around 229 GW during the summer period. The following steps have been taken for meeting the increased demand for power:
Measures have been taken to ensure the availability of the generation capacity. The generators have been directed to complete the maintenance work of their plants well before the period of high demand. No planned maintenance will be taken during the high demand period (say April & May, 2023).
- Monitoring and Coordination with Ministries of Coal and Railways, on a regular basis, for increase in the production and dispatch of coal as much as possible.
- All Power Generators have been asked for timely import of required coal for blending purposes so that adequate coal stock is maintained in the plant.
- All captive coal blocks have been asked to maximize the coal production to supplement the coal supply from domestic coal companies (CIL and SCCL).
- Additional arrangement for gas for running gas based stations has been planned from GAIL, during high power demand months.
- Imported Coal Based (ICB) plants have been issued statutory directions to stock coal and generate power during high demand period.
As per the information available in the ‘Report on Performance of State Power Utilities’ for the years 2018-19 to 2020-21 published by Power Finance Corporation (PFC) Ltd. on October, 2022, payables for distribution utilities at the end of FY 2018-19 to FY 2020-21 is given at Annexure-I. The details of the liabilities in respect of Ajmer, Jodhpur and Jaipur DISCOMs of Rajasthan State are given at Annexure-II. Some of the reasons leading to increasing liability on DISCOMs are higher AT&C Losses (which occur due to technical inefficiencies, theft and other factors can also lead to significant losses for DISCOMS), Subsidies (many states in India provide subsidies on electricity tariffs, if not timely paid which if not timely paid can put additional financial pressure on DISCOMS) and unviable Tariffs (The tariffs charged by DISCOMS for electricity are sometimes lower than the cost of supplying it, leading to losses).