According to government data, power consumption in the April-June quarter grew marginally by 1.8 per cent year-on-year to 407.76 billion units, mainly due to unseasonal rains, Biparjoy cyclone and heavy monsoon rains. Data from the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) showed that electricity consumption in the April-June quarter in 2022 stood at 400.44 billion units (BU) as compared to 340.37 BU in the same period of 2021, registering a growth of 17.6 per cent.
The peak power demand has increased to 223.23 GW in April-June 2023 from 215.88 GW in the same period of 2022. In April-June 2021 it was 193.99 GW. Thus, growth in peak power demand has been slow in the first quarter of the current financial year. The power ministry had earlier estimated that the country’s electricity demand would reach 229 GW during the summer. But, it could not reach the expected level in April-June this year due to unseasonal rains, Biparjoy cyclone and heavy monsoon rains.
The Ministry has taken several steps to avoid outages due to supply constraints. It has asked imported coal based power plants to run at full capacity. It has also directed coal-based plants to import dry fuel for blending to avoid any shortage. Industry experts say that the demand for power fell due to rains as people used less cooling equipment during April-June 2023 as compared to the previous year.
According to the latest Index of Industrial Production (IIP) data, electricity generation declined by 0.1 percent in the April-May period, as against a growth of 17.4 percent in the same period in 2022. The growth of electricity generation remained almost stagnant at 0.9 per cent in May and decelerated to 1.1 per cent in April this year, the IIP data showed.
Electricity generation also declined by 1.6 percent in March this year. However, according to IIP data, it increased by 8.2 per cent in February and 12.7 per cent in January. The IIP data showed that rains have also impacted power generation, leading to a slower growth in power consumption in the country during the first quarter of this fiscal.
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