High temperatures across corridor of India have pushed electricity demand to near- record situations in recent weeks, driving worries about yet another summer squeeze on power force.
Peak demand for electricity touched 211 gigawatts in January, close to an each- time high last summer when heavy assiduity roared back from epidemic checks and the population contended with scorching conditions that saw a 122- time-old heat record traduced.
Temperatures have been as much as 11C above normal in some regions in the once week and urged the India Meteorological Department to advise growers to check wheat and other crops for signs of heat stress.
The surprisingly early onset of hotter rainfall- and vaticinations that power consumption will rise as irrigation pumps and air conditioners are twirled up- is fueling concern that the nation’s energy network will come under new strain, after two consecutive times of dislocations.
Power stations that use imported coal have formerly been ordered to operate at full capacity for three months during the summer season to help avoid knockouts, and to ease the pressure on domestic coal inventories. Electricity demand could set a new high of 229 gigawatts in April, according to the power ministry.
” The way temperature is rising it’s relatively unusual in February the situation is getting a matter of concern for us,” according to Bhanwar Singh Bhati, power minister in Rajasthan, where power inventories are formerly being allotted to homes and growers.” The electricity demand may rise 20 to 30 mpared to last summer. There is no other option than to cut power force.”
Rajasthan is a mecca of solar energy, yet can struggle to insure acceptable power inventories during summer months if there are detainments entering coal from mines in other regions.
Coal accounts for further than 70 of electricity generation in India, and stashes at power stations are presently well below a target of 45 million tons that the government asked to be met by the end of March.
To be sure, current elevated temperatures are not inescapably a signal of extreme rainfall in March to May, according to Mrutyunjay Mohapatra, director general of meteorology at the India Meteorological Department.” It’s natural to be agitated if you get temperatures like this in the month of February,” he said.
India’s capability to meet its summer power requirements will also be largely determined by sweats to insure sufficient coal is being booby-trapped and transported, said Pratap Keshari Deb, energy minister of Odisha, one of the nation’s top directors of the energy. still,” everything falls in place,” he said, If coal inventories are assured.
