As the city continues to simmer under the intense heat with maximum temperature settling at 42 degrees Celsius on Friday, national Capital’s peak power demand reached to 6,651 MW, highest ever recorded in the city. According to discom officials, the peak power demand in June may breach the 7,000 MW mark. Last summers, it was recorded at 6,526 MW.
A senior BSES official said that Delhi’s power demand has broken all the previous records as it touched 6,651 MW at 3.36 pm on Friday. “This year demand has crossed 6,000 MW mark eight times. In 2016-17, the power demand had crossed the 6,000 MW only twice,” he said.
He further said, “Peak power demand in BRPL’s area of South and West Delhi, which had reached 2,745 MW during the summers of 2017, is expected to cross 2,880 MW this year. While the demand in BYPL’s area of East and Central Delhi which had reached 1,469 MW last year is expected to touch around 1,670 MW,”
Meanwhile, Tata Power Delhi Distribution (Tata Power-DDL) which supplies power to over seven million consumers in North Delhi, registered1,750 MW power demand on Thursday and 1,850 MW on Friday. The demand is expected to touch 1,950 MW in next few days, a senior Tata Power-DDL official said. He also said that the discom has already arranged 2,200 MW to meet any exigencies.
In order to meet the demand of around 40 lakh consumers, arrangements have been firmed up by BRPL and BYPL to source adequate electricity. “These arrangements include long-term Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) and banking arrangements with other States, including Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu and Bhutan,” the BSES official said.
The official also said that BSES discoms will get up to 665 MW of power through banking arrangements. Additionally, around 150 MW of renewable energy from Himachal Pradesh and around 20 MW from Rajasthan will further boost the power arrangements. In case of unforeseen contingencies because of low generation and outages of power plants, the discoms will purchase short-term power from the exchange, he added.
Official said that the BSES discoms invested substantial resources to strengthen the network. Also, to ensure reliable supply, it has also taken several steps such as preventive maintenance, strengthening of call the centre, load balancing at substations, deployment of additional manpower, setting up of dedicated team for monitoring of complaints, deployment of mobile transformers, deployment of quick reaction teams to tackle exigencies, establishment of war room to review complaints and their resolution etc.
Source: dailypioneer
