Power Watch | Officials say enough power to meet Delhi's summer demand, but overload and local failures a key risk

Delhi government has started to take measures to prepare for a demand surge from next month.

As day temperatures begin to soar, Delhi has again started facing sporadic power cuts which are testing the newly-formed BJP government's efforts to complete maintenance and upgradation, and mitigate the likely demand surge between April to July, expected to cross last year's record.

Data from Delhi’s power department, seen by Moneycontrol, shows that power cuts have occurred across parts of Dwarka, Rohini, Badli, Daryaganj, Chandni Chowk, Panchsheel, Mayur Vihar Phase 3, Safdarjung Enclave, Mehrauli, Dilshad Garden among others locations in the past three days. The duration of the outages ranged from less than an hour to about two hours.

The power cuts are not yet widespread in Delhi as the demand has not yet soared, given that tempratures have been bearable so far. Currently, the maximum and minimum temperatures are in the range of 34 to 36 degrees Celsius and 14 to 17 degrees Celsius, respectively. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has predicted that temperatures could rise this week, with the maximum expected to be 42.9 degree Celsius on April 7, with slightly cooler evenings at 29.6 degrees Celsius.

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Delhi government has started to take measures to prepare for a demand surge from next month.

“…the months of March, April have never been a challenge anyway. Power demand picks up from May and the situation remains tricky until July. Delhi has tied-up enough power to meet the projected demand this summer. Discoms also have been directed to ensure contingency plans at the micro level,” said a senior official with Delhi’s power department, requesting anonymity.

According to the State Load Dispatch Centre (SLDC), Delhi's power demand is expected to cross 9,000 MW this year, which will be a new record, after peaking at 8,656 MW during 2024.

Delhi’s Plan to Deal with Peak Power Demand

The Delhi government has not yet made public any summer action plan, but the officials said the National Capital Region’s Minister for Power Ashish Sood has directed discoms to carry out any repair and maintenance work within a maximum of five days. This is important, as majority of the power cuts reported in Delhi are due to local faults.

A Tata Power-DDL spokesperson told Moneycontrol that typically the discom conducts maintenance and network upgradation work between October and March. "…this year, due to GRAP (Graded Response Action Plan, meant to curb air pollution) restrictions in the month of November and December 2024, our scheduled maintenance and network upgradation outage plan amplified in the month of March 2025."

Tata Power-DDL distribute electricity in North Delhi, and serve a population of around 90 lakh residents.

The minister has also asked discoms to remove unauthorised cables from electricity poles to reduce excessive load. Besides, Delhi already has an islanding system in place, enabling the city to keep functioning even during grid disturbances, including a grid failure.

Delhi has any power generation capacity due to constraints relating to land and pollution related norms, though it does operate a gas-based power plant in Bawana which is highly under-utilised. The Bawana plant produces only about 350 megawatts (MW) of its total capacity of 1371 MW due to gas shortage and affordability issues.

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To tide over demand surge, the national capital relies on Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, which either have thermal power or hydropower plants.

However, sourcing electricity is not an issue for power distribution companies (discoms) in Delhi as they prepare for the summer demand through long-term Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) as well as power banking with other states. If required, discoms can also buy electricity from power exchanges.

Local Factors at Play

Delhi is India’s highest power consuming city and given the high demand, power cuts in general remain manageable. However, irrespective of the claims made by the AAP and the BJP, outages occurred during the AAP’s 10-year rule and have continued under the newly-formed BJP government’s rule.

The problem, according to a discom official, is not lack of availability of power, but has more to do with local factors. “Some areas still rely on older power infrastructure, leading to frequent transformer overloads and failures, which as considered as an unscheduled power cut. Besides, sudden spikes in electricity demand can also cause localised power failures, especially in residential areas,” the official said.

"To meet with eventualities, mobile distribution transformers have been deployed for breakdown and are evenly stationed across the entire distribution network. Additional staff has been recruited at Discoms’ call centres. Dedicated round-the-clock teams to attend breakdown and supply restoration for sub-transmission system have also been created," Tata Power-DDL said in a statement on April 2.

Power supply in Delhi is distributed by three private discoms - BSES Rajdhani Power (BRPL), BSES Yamuna Power (BYPL) and Tata Power Delhi. The BSES discoms did not respond to queries sent by Moneycontrol regarding power cuts.

A statement issued last month by BSES had said that in order to prevent local power failures due to sudden spikes in the demand, both BRPL and BYPL have deployed latest technologies like AI (Artificial Intelligence) and ML (machine learning) to accurately predict power demand.

"Tata Power-DDL would like to clarify the reasons behind recent power disruptions reported in certain locations. Delhi University (no power cuts in the area in last one week), Kirari (in the past week there were seven planned shutdowns of average one hour for system improvement schemes to mitigate overloading ahead of the summer), Rohini Sector 22 (one planned shutdown of six hours was carried out in Pocket 11 and 12 to augment the distribution transformer), Burari (over the last week, nine planned shutdowns, each averaging three hours, were conducted under system improvement schemes to address potential overloading during the summer)," Tata Power-DDL said.