Good news: India's power shortage has finally halved from its peak

An increase of nearly 20,000 MWof generation capacity narrowed the country’s peak powerdeficit to 3.7 percent last month from 6.3 percent in June2013, according to an official data.

Peak power deficit or shortfall in electricity supplywhen the demand is at its peak, last month, was 5,295 MW or3.7 per cent, the CEA (Central Electricity Authority) datashowed.The total power requirement during the month stood at1,42,647 MW of which 1,37,352 MW was met.Power shortage in June last year was to the tune of 8,597MW, when the demand was 1,35,561 MW against a supply of1,26,964 MW.

The peak electricity deficit in May this year was 7,061MW or 5 percent. The power requirement was 1,41,855 MW of
which 1,34,794 MW was met.“There has been impressive power generation capacityaddition of 19,700 MW in FY'14. This has resulted in the peakdeficit coming down significantly to 3.7 per cent from 6.3 percent in June last year,” Debashish Mishra, Senior Director(Consulting), Deloitte, said.

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Another reason for decline in the peak power deficit waslower industrial production.“Because of severe industrial slowdown, the peak powerdemand grew less than 1 percent in FY'14 or less than 1,000MW in absolute term,” Mishra said.Northeastern region comprising Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur,Mizoram, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland was the worstaffected, recording a peak deficit of 9.2 percent.

The total demand in the region during June 2014 was 2,252MW and supply 2,045 MW.Meanwhile, the eastern part of India comprising statessuch as West Bengal, Odisha, Bihar and Jharkhand was leastaffected reporting a deficit of 1.7 per cent, the data showed.The requirement was 16,628 MW against a supply of 16,342MW.

PTI