New Delhi: Union Minister for Power, New & Renewable Energy RK Singh on Monday said that to meet the growing power demand, all states need to run all power plants at full capacity. Singh said that one way the government has thought of addressing the challenge of growing demand is that all power plants need to be run at full capacity.
“We observe that some states do not run their power plants at peak capacity and instead seek power from the Centre’s pool. If some state is not running their plants at peak demand, we will not be able to supplement from the central pool. We have to focus on making sure that all our plants run and all our plants run at full capacity,” said Singh while addressing the Power Ministers conference of States and UTs.
Singh pointed out the second challenge of meeting the fast-growing power demand. “The demand increased by 20 per cent more than last year, in August, September and in October 2023. This shows how fast our economy is growing. Also, we met a peak demand of 2.41 lakhs MW recently while peak demand was 1.9 lakhs MW in 2017-18. If the peak demand grows even higher, we may not be able to meet it. This is one challenge we need to address,” he said.
Speaking about the challenges, the Minister said that while the forthcoming COP-28 meeting is expected to focus on reducing coal usage, India is not going to compromise on the availability of power for our growth. “COP-28 is going to be held in the UAE. There is going to be pressure on nations at COP to reduce the usage of coal. We are not going to do this, since our point of view is clear, that we are not going to compromise on the availability of power for our growth, even if it requires that we add coal-based capacity. At the same time, we need to and we will achieve the targets we had set for ourselves at COP,” he said.
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Talking about thermal power, Singh said that earlier, around 25,000 MW was under construction, mostly in the public sector. “But this was not sufficient; so, we started work on adding 25,000 MW, but we need to start work on an additional 30,000 MW. So, about 80,000 MW of thermal capacity is under construction. All this capacity addition is being done through the public sector. Private sector investment has not started coming, but I am quite certain that private sector investments will come, as we have made the system viable and the sector gives returns,” Singh said.
He emphasised the need to add more capacity of power as fast as possible. “Both conventional and renewable energy need to be added. We are not going to compromise with the availability of power. We will be having round-the-clock renewable energy. Role of thermal power will also continue,” Singh said.
Stating that India is in a comfortable position as far as the supply of power is concerned, Singh said that there are 22.5 hours of power supply in rural areas whereas the urban areas get power availability up to 23.5 hours on average. The Minister urged the States to set up new power plants near coal belts so that issues related to long-distance transportation of coal and the availability of rakes do not arise.
Putting light on thermal and renewable power capacity, Power Secretary Pankaj Agarwal said that India is very much on its way to adding about 10,000 MW of thermal capacity and 21,000 MW of renewable energy capacity during this financial year. “We are taking concrete steps to move towards a total capacity of 900 GW by 2031-32,” he said.
Agarwal said that on the energy efficiency front, the country has launched the carbon market. “We have started with a mandate-based market and we will soon move to an offset mechanism. We have started a STAR labelling scheme for solar PV cells and panels; a large programme for demand aggregation for induction cookstoves and efficient fans has been launched by the Minister,” the secretary stated.
