PowerShock | Power capacity has grown, yet deficit persists. Here’s India’s power story in charts

if blending with domestic coal is not started by June 15, then the domestic allocation of the concerned defaulter's thermal power plants will be further reduced by 5 per cent, the ministry had said in a letter to state governments and power generation companies (gencos) (Representative Image)

India is in throes of yet another power crisis - its second such encounter in less than six months.

While there is some relief in the power situation right now, it may be short-lived and power sector players are bracing for more challenges. If coal stock availability is not ramped up before the monsoon, we may be staring at power outages again.

There are fundamental issues in the power sector that need resolution. Moneycontrol has been doing a special series on it — the PowerShock. This special infographic story will tell you about the hits and misses in the power sector that have led to this situation.

India’s power demand hit an all-time high of 207.1 gigawatts (GW) on April 29, driven by a spike in demand from households amid an ongoing heat wave and a pick-up in industrial demand even as power units scrambled for fuel, leading to many states being forced to undertake power cuts. Here’s a look at the different states and their power position in April.

India has a total installed power capacity of 3,99,497 megawatts (MW), which is owned and operated by the central and state governments and the private sector.

India’s total installed capacity of 3,99,497 megawatts (MW) includes fossil fuel-based power (running on coal, lignite, gas and diesel), renewable energy ( hydro, wind, solar, biomass power, cogeneration, waste to energy, small hydro power) and nuclear power. Fossil fuel-based power still accounts for almost 60 percent of the total installed capacity.

While fossil fuel continues to be the major source of power, a close look reveals that the Plant Load Factor (PLF), a measure of a power plant's capacity utilisation, has declined to 58.87 percent in 2021-22 from 77.5 percent in 2009-10.

Power demand, or requirement, has been consistently increasing but due to Covid led-disruptions, it declined in 2019-20. The overall power demand and supply situation has remained almost the same between 2016-17 and 2020-21, with power deficit ranging between -0.7 and -0.4.

A decade ago, India’s growth in power generation growth was a healthy 9.1 percent but it declined drastically to 4.4 percent in 2012-13, a year that witnessed a national grid breakdown and coal shortage. It limped back to 8.84 percent in 2014-15 but since then it has been in a slow decline till it hit single digit in 2019-20.

With inputs from Ritesh Presswala and Graphics by Upnesh Raval