Mumbai: After suffering for four days, the city and its suburbs welcomed a day without power outages on Sunday, thanks to comparatively less consumption and an extra 1,200 MW traded from the market.
Pandurang Patil, Chief PRO, Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Co. Ltd (MSEDCL), said, “The relief is due to less use of agricultural pumps due to the rains, which results in lesser consumption. Last October, we didn’t face a power shortage as there was no lack of coal. This year, due to heavy rain, coal mines are not back to full production. This led to the shortage in electricity generation, and the rise in demand due to rise in temperature could not be met.”
On Sunday, both supply and demand of electricity was at 15,400MW, and even non-urban areas received power supply without interruption. Mr. Patil said, “Load-shedding can be avoided on Monday if the demand and supply ratio remain equal. If there is a minor fluctuation in the ratio, places falling under A, B, C, D and E categories are unlikely to face load-shedding. We have planned to trade extra power on a daily basis from the market for October. This year in May, daily need was of 23,000 MW, which was met without any load shedding due to the availability of coal.”
This month, the highest demand for power was recorded on October 4 at 17,500 MW when the supply available was 15,000 MW, leading to power cuts. On October 6, cities were exempted from load-shedding as demand had fallen to 16,500 MW, while supply was at 15,700 MW.
