Minister for Power and New & Renewable Energy, RK Singh, said that India's power situation would've been worse than Sri Lanka had coal not been imported to meet the shortfall.

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He went on to explain that there was a shortfall of 4.1 million tonnes (MT) in April 2023, followed by 1.8 MT in May, 3.8 MT in June, 2.4 MT in July, 7.1 MT in August and 8.3 MT in September. The average shortfall was 2.5 lakh tonnes (LT) last month.

Stating that a 20% rise in power demand for the past three months was indicative of the country's economic growth, he said that the government consciously chose imported coal blending over load shedding as the rise in coal production was outstripped by the rise in power demand.

India plans to add 78 GW thermal capacity and 50 GW hydro capacity by 2031/32, and 10 GW thermal capacity and 21 GW renewable energy capacity is to be added in FY 2023-24. While a shortfall of 38.1 MT coal was noted in FY 22-23, the Minister said there is a need to add more power capacity, more renewable than conventional, even as he assured that there was no difficulty noted in power transmission.

Indicating that the government is examining the shortfall of power in states like Bihar and Jharkhand which have noted unscheduled outages, he said that states have been asked to set up more pithead plants in coal bearing areas to reduce the cost of logistics.

To ensure non-stop operation of imported coal-based plants, fixed charges have been linked to their operation and all states have asked to run power plants at full capacity, while gas-based capacity has been kept on stand-by to meet non-solar hours demand. States not running their plants at peak demand won't be provided power from the central pool.

To encourage adoption of renewable energy, the government is looking to rectify rules enacted by several regulators in states which discouraged it. Discoms have also been asked to give a technical feasibility report in 15 days for rooftop solar panels, or else permission will be considered as granted.

Also Read:India comes up with star-rating program to make it easy to identify energy efficiency of your solar panel

(Edited by : Sangam Singh)

First Published:Nov 6, 2023 8:47 PM IST