The government on Monday excluded high-loss areas from electricity demand estimates. The country has been experiencing extended power cuts due to soaring temperatures leading to demand supply widening. As a consequence, it also stopped the practice of releasing the energy demand-and-supply position that it had initiated about two weeks ago when the last heat wave subsided.
In a statement, the Water and Power Ministry stated that transformation, transmission and distribution should not be accounted for in the power supply and on the other hand, suppressed demand minus high-loss areas and constraints should not be taken into account for demand assessment.
“If for any calculation transmission and distribution losses are to be deducted, demand for high-loss and constraint areas also needs to be deducted for fair judgement of the scenario,” the statement said.
The ministry claimed that electricity distribution across the country is as per the announced schedule despite the severe heat wave. It reiterated its claim that “not a single megawatt of forced load shedding was conducted in the entire country despite a steep rise in demand.”
Sources are reported to have said that the indicative electricity demand hovered around 21,000MW, unchanged from the demand on Sunday at 8 pm. Generation peaked to 16,040MW, hence registering a gap of about 5,000MW, leading to a nationwide supply gap of almost seven and a half hours. After accounting for transformation and transmission losses of 7 per cent, the gap exceeded 6,000MW on Monday.
An official is reported to have detailed that the government has always been showing suppressed demand in order to show lower demand-supply gaps and parking the deficit supply in far-flung and rural parts of the country as ‘high-loss areas’.
He went on to say if a consumer is not supplied electricity, then this translates into unmet demand for electricity and must be accounted for when calculating demand.
The power ministry statement said the overall system demand of the government also showed demand for high-loss areas and areas with constraints. “The distribution companies (Discos) have a different schedule for the high-loss areas” and, therefore, their demand side should not hold ground in the overall demand.
The ministry claimed that all Discos are efficiently managing the load distribution. In this regard, special teams have been tasked to immediately restore electricity in case of local faults. It went onto add that all Discos have announced their schedules. It addition complaint centres are actively addressing consumer complaints while ministry officials National Transmission and Dispatch Company (NTDC), National Power Control Centre (NPCC) and all Discos are closely monitoring the electricity situation in the country.
