Fuelled by development and luxury living, Mumbai’s demand for power soars

Mumbai's power demand has risen due to redevelopment and infrastructure projects, leading to outages. The city consumed over 4,100 MW during peak demand for the first time in years. Trombay and Dahanu power plants, which supply the city, now lack the capacity to meet demand and are also expensive. Power experts claim that in the next few years, demand will rise by 2,000 MW. Power companies are now focusing on renewable energy sources like solar and wind for future supply.

Mumbai: The overcast skies and cool, strong winds from Cyclone Biparjoy have hoisted our hopes of the much-delayed monsoon onset after sweltering heat hit Mumbai in the first week of June. The heat spiked the demand for electricity, and Mumbai for the first time in years consumed over 4,100 megawatts (MW) during peak demand.

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A decade ago, the city’s power demand was in the region of 2,500-2,700 MW. And in the next four to five years, it is predicted to touch 4,300-4,400 MW.

Mumbai’s 45 lakh-odd consumers are served by the same distribution companies, the embedded generation capacity of whose power plants has, in fact, dropped. The power plants of Trombay and Dahanu supply without interruption to the city (which is called embedded generation). While the Trombay plants have an operation capacity of 930 MW and the Dahanu ones 500 MW, these are not enough to meet the demand, and are also expensive for Mumbaikars.

“Over two decades ago, the Trombay and Dahanu plants were enough to meet Mumbai’s demand,” said Ashok Pendse, power expert. “Now there is no way of increasing current capacity. Mumbai can get cheaper power from the open market, and in future these power plants should be used as a back-up.” The different units of Trombay power plants have been running since 1956 and the permissions for the Dahanu plant will also end in the coming years.

Current situation

The Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport (BEST) supplies power to 10.50 lakh consumers in the island city, Adani Electricity to 26 lakh consumers in the western and eastern suburbs and Tata Power to 7.50 lakh consumers across the city. BEST’s electricity supply comes from 650 MW by Tata Power and the rest from short- medium- and long-term contracts from other power generators. It is also tying up with companies for renewable energy of more than 600 MW at a cost of ₹2.50 per unit.

Generation capacity has fallen despite Mumbai’s rapidly growing demand for power. In the last few days, people across the city have been facing power outages that last from a few minutes to hours. Power fluctuations are, however, being blamed on cable faults and local issues by the power distribution companies.

The surge in power load seems to have affected BEST as well. In the last few days, several pockets of the island city like Dadar, Wadala, Churchgate, Marine Drive and Antop Hill have been facing power outages.

Former BEST Committee member Ravi Raja claimed that power cuts had become frequent. “The demand surpassed 950 MW in the last few days when Mumbai’s demand crossed the 4,000 MW mark,” said a BEST official. The BEST administration, however, palmed this off as a local case where cable faults cropped up in only a handful of buildings. On June 13, according to a BEST spokesperson, there was ‘off-supply’ after a 33 KV of Backbay substation tripped, leading to lights going off on Marine Drive.

The number of daily consumers of BEST has barely gone up by a lakh or so in the last 10 years. At present, the power demand in the suburbs has touched 2,000 MW which used to be 1,300 MW or so back in 2012-13. The rise in demand has also prompted the cost of supply of electricity to go up. Earlier this April, new tariffs were put in place.

An Adani Electricity spokesperson said, “We are currently meeting a 2,000-MW power demand, of which 30 percent comes from renewable sources. This will scale up to 60 percent by 2027. We are expecting a significant increase in demand, which will primarily be met through renewable energy sources.”

Way forward

The rise in power demand has been attributed to redevelopment activities in the form of malls and multiplexes, huge infrastructure projects of new metro rail lines, augmentation of suburban railways, roads and flyovers, airports, rehabilitation of slums and expanding townships in and around Mumbai. Power experts claimed that the load was also owing to the growing number of skyscrapers and growing demand for air-conditioning and ‘environment-friendly’ electric vehicles. Put together, they said, this would lead to an increase of around 2,000 MW in the next three to four years.

Luxury living has prompted larger houses, which has led to homebuyers installing power-guzzling ACs and geysers. “The use of ACs is a major contributor to the rise in demand for electricity. Almost 34 to 35 percent of total power demand can be attributed to the ACs,” said Pendse. “If we go by this number, then 1,500 to 1,600 MW alone is guzzled by ACs.”

The power companies claim that they are focusing more on renewable energy sources like solar and wind. Gradually, the power plants in Mumbai will become a back-up.