Power panel meets as Delhi's demand hits record for 1st week of May

The Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) took a slew of measures to ensure there are no procedural delays in procurement of power.

The Capital’s peak power demand rose to 6,194 MW -- the highest ever for the first week of May -- on Monday as the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) took a slew of measures to ensure there are no procedural delays in procurement of power.

Delhi's peak power demand rose to 6,194 MW -- the highest ever for the first week of May. (Representative image/HT Archive)

“Delhi met a peak power demand of 6,194 MW 3.34pm on Monday, which is the highest for the first week of May. The peak power demand of Delhi had earlier risen to 6,197 MW on April 29, which was an all-time high for the month of April. Delhi’s peak demand is likely to cross the 8,000 MW-mark this time, which will break all previous records,” said a senior official from the state power department.

The highest-ever peak power demand in Delhi was 7,409 MW, recorded on July 2, 2019.

Even as the city has been able to meet its full peak demand so far, the Delhi government last week wrote to the Centre seeking its intervention as it claimed that two of the five power plants that feed electricity to the national capital had coal stocks for only up to two days. This was, however, rejected by Union power minister RK Singh who shot back a letter stating that the figures quoted by the Kejriwal administration were inaccurate and that all the plants feeding Delhi are receiving adequate coal supplies on a regular basis.

Meanwhile, DERC has relaxed several rules related to procurement of electricity to avoid delays on the part of the power utilities.

“As an interim measure, the DERC has allowed intra discom banking facility, overlapping of banking and bilateral transactions, pass through of additional deviation and sustain deviation charges etc. with immediate effect till July 31 or till further orders,” said Mukesh Wadhwa, secretary, DERC.

Officials said the relaxations will help discoms directly buy power or get into interim agreements with other power utilities during exigencies, without seeking approvals from the DERC.

“The state load dispatch centre (SLC), discoms and the Delhi Transco Limited have been directed to maintain grid discipline, availability of transmission and distribution network and 24x7 supply of power to the consumers of Delhi,” added Wadhwa.

On Saturday, Union power minister RK Singh held a meeting to review the coal stock position in thermal power plants. In the meeting, Singh took stock of Delhi’s power situation separately, noting that all discoms in the Capital will get as much power as requisitioned by them.