According to Reuters, India will likely face risks of nighttime power cuts due to delays in adding new coal-fired and hydropower despite the rapid addition of solar farms, which helped India avert daytime supply gaps. The power availability during nighttime is expected to be 1.7% lower than peak demand. Coal, nuclear and gas capacity are expected to meet about 83% of peak demand at night.
April nighttime peak demand is expected to hit 217 gigawatts (GW), up 6.4% on the highest nighttime levels recorded in April last year. While Indians looking to beat the heat this summer will want steady power for their air-conditioners, night time outage risks threaten industries that operate around the clock, including auto, electronics, steel bar and fertiliser manufacturing plants.
After the Grid-India report, the government brought forward maintenance at some coal-fired power plants and secured extra gas-fired capacity to run to try to avert outages, another senior government official said. As much as 189.2 GW of coal-fired capacity is expected to be available this April, according to Grid-India's February note. That would be up more than 11% from last year, according to Reuters calculations based on Grid-India data. Together, coal, nuclear and gas capacity are expected to meet about 83% of peak demand at night.
Hydro power will be crucial not only to meet much of the remaining supply but also as a flexible generator, as coal-fired plants cannot be ramped up and down quickly to address variability in demand. However Grid-India has forecast peak hydro availability in April this year will be 18% below what it was a year earlier, when output was boosted by favourable weather conditions.
Around midnight through April last year, jostling for power was intense, with buyers making bids for five times more power than sellers offered, a Reuters analysis of data from the Indian Energy Exchange, the country's most liquid electricity trading platform, showed.
