Power shortages haunt economy

Peak and basic power shortages continue to pose a challenge to economic managers. And, more worrying is the fact that there is no let up in rising power deficit.

Fuel shortages and slippages in capacity addition seems to have aggravated the problem for industry users, retail domestic consumers and farmers. Peaking shortages rose to 13.3 per cent in 2009-10 hinting at a time when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has proposed an action plan to move to double-digit economic growth in next 2-3 years.As per technical body, peaking shortages moved up to 13.3 per cent in last financial year as against 11.9 per cent in 2008-09 owing to fuel scarcity that also hit capacity additions and green field power projects targets.

Provisional data for April 2009 – March2010 compiled by CEA, peaking shortages in absolute terms has been reported at 15,748-mw in 2009-10. This is against actual peak power deficit during earlier financial year 13,024-mw. In a separate report CEA said that power generation growth rate during the year 2009-10 was constrained at 6.6 per cent. The report said hydroelectric energy generation was 8.8 billion units less than targeted due to scanty rainfall received in the country during monsoon.

Interestingly enough, there has been a modest improvement in power at base load as the basic power deficit slumped to 10.1 per cent in 2009 – 10 as against 11.1 per cent in previous financial year. Short supply of domestic coal and delay in imports by MMTC for NTPC resulted in under-utilisation of capacity at some of the power plants with estimated generation loss of 14.47 billion units in April’09-Mar’10. Power generation loss owing to shortages in gas during first six months of 2009-10 has been pegged at 2.8 billion units. But, gas availability improved as KG basin gas being made available to power units.

Total shortfall in targeted capacity generation in 2009-10 was reported at 48.2 billion units due to shut down in thermal power stations due to unscheduled maintenance, delay in commissioning of units, and under-performance in generation by nuclear plants. Nuclear power plants under-performed due to fuel shortage.

Bihar as well as J&K was the worst hit states during the year with a power deficit of over 32 per cent. While union territories Chandigarh and Lakshadweep had no power deficit, Himachal Pradesh was a power surplus state. West Bengal, Sikkim, Tripura and Delhi experienced least outages.