The country witnessed a peak power demand of 173 gigawatts (GW) on April 30, which was a drop of 24GW from the demand of 197 GW on April 28, data from Grid-India showed.
The reduction is attributable to rains and thunderstorms in several parts of the country leading to a drop in temperature, which were lower than normal for this time of the year. The country's power demand had started to rise again between April 24 and April 27, However, as a western disturbance hit Delhi and other parts of north and eastern India, the temperatures fell subsequently leading to a fall in power demand from April 28.
With rains predicted till May 3, the power demand is likely to remain below 200 GW until then.
On April 28, the peak power demand stood at 197 GW (197,000 MW) while the peak demand deficit (demand that could not be met) stood at 547 MW while the demand. On April 29, the demand was 188.8 GW while the deficit was 361 MW. On April 30, the demand plummeted to 173 GW and the deficit was 475 MW.
Senior power officials said apart from weather conditions, another reason behind the drop in power demand was the long weekend when offices, institutions and other commercial and industrial sectors mostly remain shut.
According to the data, the daily peak demand breached the 200 GW mark in nine days in April. On April 19, the peak power demand that was met was 214.92 GW (214,924 MW), while the peak shortage was 1,418 MW. While the numbers for April 18 are mentioned above, the demand that was met on April 17 was 211 GW (210,829 MW), while the peak shortage was 1,592 MW.
Throughout the week, the peak demand that was met continued to fall. On April 20, the peak demand that was met fell to 211.8 GW (211,804 MW) but the shortfall was only 55 MW. The next day, the demand met slipped to 205 GW (204,777 MW) and the shortage was 57 MW. On April 22, the peak demand met was 198.2 GW (198,272 MW) and the peak shortage rose to 884 MW. On April 23, the demand met came down to 184.4 GW (184,407 MW) but the shortage too narrowed to 34 MW.
However, on April 24, it being a Monday, the peak demand that was met rose to 191.9 GW (191,917 MW) after a gradual decline for six consecutive days. On April 25, the demand that was met marginally increased again to 194.3 GW (194,367 MW). On April 26, this slightly rose to 195.8 GW (195,821 MW) and on April 27, it was 196.2 GW (196,240 MW).
The coal stock situation is “manageable”, as of now, data accessed by Moneycontrol showed. Of the 165 domestic coal-based thermal power plants in the country, 32 had critical stocks. Last year at this time, the number of such plants was around 96.
Coal stock is said to be at a critical level when power plants have less than 25 percent of the normative 26 days of fuel with them.
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