Power Situation Update: Country Expected to Meet Summer Demand, Day and Night
To meet the summer electricity demand during the months of April, May and June 2024, the Government of India had already put in place the following measures, as part of its advance planning.
- Section 11 Directions for Imported-Coal-Based Power Plants, to make full capacity available for generation
- Planned Maintenance of Power Plants shifted to Monsoon Season
- Minimizing partial and forced outages of thermal generating units
- Revival of thermal plants under long outage
- Advisory to generation companies (central and state generation companies and Independent Power Producers) to keep their generating plants under healthy condition to have full capacity available
- Optimization of hydro power generation
- Generating stations have been directed to offer surplus power for sale in Energy Exchange
With these measures, we have been able to successfully meet the peak evening power demand of 224 GW during April 2024.
In addition to this, the government has taken following further measures to meet the power demand during May and June, which is projected to peak at 235 GW during day-time and 225 GW during evening hours for May, and to peak at 240 GW during day-time and 235 GW during evening hours for June 2024.
- Similar to that done for Imported-Coal-based power plants, Section 11 directions have been issued to gas-based power plants too. This has made available additional 6 GW for the months of May and June, in addition to the 10 GW which was already available earlier.
- Optimization of hydro power generation has made available an additional 4 GW for meeting the demand during the months of May and June.
- Further, the shifting of planned maintenance and minimization of partial and forced outages of thermal power plants have made available another 5 GW for the summer season.
- Further compared to April, power generated from wind is expected to increase by 4 GW to 5 GW during May and June.
Thus, with the above measures in place and given the current generation trend and the anticipated above-normal monsoon in the following months as predicted by the IMD, it is expected that the power demand would be adequately met both during the day and during night hours in the summer months of May and June 2024.