Delhi Clocks Highest Peak Power Demand of the Season

The peak power demand in Delhi clocked 5,805 MW on the night of June 15, the season’s highest, surpassing the previous high of 5,591 MW recorded on June 12.

The peak power demand in Delhi clocked 5,805 MW on the night of June 15, the season’s highest, surpassing the previous high of 5,591 MW recorded on June 12, power discom BSES has issued in a statement. It noted that because of the weather, Delhi’s peak power demand was a bit muted some days back but off late, it has been increasing steadily.

“On their part, BRPL (BSES Rajdhani Power Ltd) and BYPL (BSES Yamuna Power Ltd) successfully met the peak power demand of 2,635 MW and 1,311 MW respectively. Last year, Delhi’s peak power demand had clocked 7,409 MW. In BRPL’s area, it was 3,211 MW and 1,686 MW in BYPL’s area,” the BSES statement said.

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After the end of the third phase lockdown on May 17, 2020, and the easing of restrictions, Delhi’s peak power started increasing and the gap narrowed. Since easing of restrictions on May 18, Delhi’s peak power demand has increased by over 40 percent.

“If we compare the peak power demand of April 2020 with that of June 2020, Delhi’s peak power demand has already increased by over 72 percent. Peak power demand in April was 3,362 MW and in June (June 15) 5,805 MW,” said the BSES statement.

Since June 1, 2020, Delhi’s peak power demand has increased by over 52 percent. It was 3,807 MW on June 1.

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The statement also said that being in essential services, BSES is always geared up to ensure quality and reliable power supply to its consumers. “We are closely watching the evolving coronavirus situation in the national capital and taking all appropriate measures to ensure reliable power supply to our consumers without compromising the safety of our employees,” it said.

On all these aspects, BSES discoms are fully geared to ensure adequate power availability during the summer months, it added. Arrangements have been firmed up to source adequate electricity to meet the power demand of over 44 lakh consumers, including long term power purchase agreements (PPA) and banking arrangements of up to 800 MW with other states.

In case of unforeseen contingencies because of low generation and outages in power plants, the Discoms will purchase short-term power from the exchange, the company said

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Recently, we had reported that the fall in demand in Delhi had more to do with the weather than the lockdown itself. According to research by foreign brokerage, Credit Suisse, the gap in power demand versus last year levels has again expanded to 18-19 percent. “We believe this is more driven by weather, rather than economic activity,” the research said. Weather is, thus, confounding one of the most frequent, independent and easily traceable indicators of economic activity at a time when such an indicator can be most useful.

Taking the Delhi weather, the report points out that the lower temperatures in April and early May enlarged the decline. Almost all through April to early May, Delhi’s maximum temperature remained about 5 degrees Celsius lower than last year’s levels. “This may have contributed to a wide gap between last year and this year’s demand,” the report said.