Demand for power peaks again, touches 6,934 MW
NEWDELHI: Delhi’s hot and humid weather conditions made the city’s power demand spike to 6,934MW on Friday, the highest so far this season.
Officials in Delhi government’s power department said they were expecting the peak electricity demand to cross 7100MW this summer and they were prepared to meet it.
“The power demand usually peaks during the afternoon when the sun is at its harshest. As power connections in Delhi are increasing by about 6% annually, more people are using air conditioners. Because of ACS, power consumption rises substantially during night hours as well. All utilities have been put on alert and arrangements have been made to meet the peak demand which may go beyond 7100MW,” said a senior government official.
Friday was the fourth time in June this year that l ast year’s peak power demand of 6526MW was breached, the official added.
Friday’s peak consumption was recorded at 3:28pm when the humidity levels touched 68% in the national Capital. Last week, the demand had surged to 6,651MW on June 1, which was also recorded around 3:36pm. In 2017, the highest power demand recorded was 6526MW on June 6 at 3:31pm, government data stated.
The high demand persisting over the past one week has also forced discoms to carry out load shedding in some areas, while a few other places have faced power cuts due to local faults. Although not alarming, areas such as Madapur Khadar, Burari, Patparganj, Uttam Nagar and Deoli faced outages varying from 30 minutes to four hours.
“Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal had said that if there is an unscheduled power cut, supply will have to be restored in one hour or people will be compensated. Today, we had no power for eight hours because of which we could not even draw water with the pumps. The government, however, has not told people about the procedure to apply for availing the compensation,” said Ashwani, a resident of Uttam Nagar.
Discoms BSES Rajdhani Power Limited and BSES Yamuna Power Limited’s BYPL said they have made arrangements to source electricity for supplying to its over 40 lakh consumers.
“These arrangements include long term power purchase agreements and sourcing 665MW through banking arrangements with other states including Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu and Bhutan. Additionally, around 150MW of renewal energy from Himachal Pradesh and around 20MW from Rajasthan will further boost the power arrangements,” a BSES spokesperson said.
In case of unforeseen contingencies, like low generation and outages of power plants, the discoms will purchase short-term power from the exchange, the discom official added.
Sanjay Banga, CEO of discom Tata Power-ddl said he is expecting the demand to cross 2,000MW in the coming days in North and North west Delhi areas.
“We have made adequate arrangements of power of up to 2,200MW, along with contingency planning, through long-term tieups and power banking arrangements and upgraded network to ensure regular supply in our area of distribution,” Banga said.
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