What's behind India's surging hunger for electricity?
Mint finds out. Demand scaled new highs on three of the last four days of August this year. For the full month, power consumption grew 21% compared with August last year.
On 1 September, India’s peak power demand hit another new high of 240 gigawatts (GW), which exceeded peak available capacity by as much as 10.745GW. This wasn’t a flash in the pan. Demand remained high the next day too at 238.6GW before falling on 3 September—a Sunday.
This is much higher than the ministry of power’s expected peak demand of 230GW in a day for the year. Last year, power demand had peaked at 201GW on 26 April. Power consumption typically peaks around April-May as temperatures soar above 40 degrees Celsius in northern and central India.
Later, as the monsoon sets in and temperatures drop, demand falls. This year is different. August was an unusually dry month with rainfall plummeting 33% below average, which neutralized the excess rainfall till July to a 9% deficit in August—the poorest in eight years.
The deficit was also unusually widespread with Kerala, Rajasthan and Gujarat the worst hit. The rising heat and humidity levels meant cooling appliances worked overtime, leading to high power consumption. The biggest is industry, accounting for over 40% of power capacity, followed by domestic households (25%), agriculture (nearly 20%) and commercial establishments (10%).
The current spike is largely due to domestic households and agricultural consumers. Farmers resorted to using pumps to draw groundwater for irrigation in the absence of rainfall. Companies had geared up for a spike in April-May, which did not happen as the summer was benign.
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