Power situation to improve soon, talks on to purchase energy from pvt producer: Haryana CM

To address the issue of power shortage, the Haryana government will hold a meeting with two private players and ask them to increase power supply across the state, chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar said during a district grievance committee meeting at Powergrid Colony, Sector 43, on Thursday.

Khattar said the government will ask both private players to provide a power supply of 1,804MW to the state at a reasonable rate amid the increased demand during the meeting, which will take place in two or three days. Both companies already have a contract with the Haryana government for supplying 1,424MW and 380MW power, respectively.

“The rise in power demand is natural during the peak summer season and private producers have a tendency to sell power in the market in order to generate more revenue. I spoke with Adani Power on Wednesday and it is likely that the issue will be resolved amicably,” said Khattar.

A senior power official said that Haryana gets its continuous long-term power supply from state government-run power plants in Panipat, Yamuna Nagar and Hisar, NTPC and China Latent power plant in Jhajjar, BBMP, as well as from central projects of NTPC, NHPC and other independent power producers.

According to power officials, there is a shortage of at least 300 megawatts (MW) to 1,800MW in several areas across the state due to factors such as non-supply from private players, heavy demand due to increased industrial and manufacturing activities, a shortfall of around 1,030MW of power within the state due to non-functioning power plants, unusually high temperatures, continuous dry weather and increased dependency of the agricultural sector on electricity for water supply due to a lack of rain, officials said.

Due to this shortfall in supply, Gurugram and other districts of Haryana are facing power cuts. Industries specifically have suffered a lot due to this crisis, officials said.

Additional chief secretary (power) PK Das said that after the third wave of the pandemic subsided this year, there has been a massive surge in economic and urbanisation activities due to which the power demand increased in the state.

“We have been supplying power to other states over the last two or three years. We normally see an 8% increase in power demand annually. However, this time, the increase has been above 20% so far. This is probably due to heightened manufacturing, industrial and urbanisation activities in the state,” he said.

According to officials, over the last three years, Haryana supplied power to states such as Jammu and Kashmir, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Meghalaya, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, West Bengal and Bihar, but this time is looking for getting back power from some of these producer states to meet its own requirement.

Das said that 145 million units of energy per day are supplied across Haryana per day currently. “Of this volume, 1.2 million to 7.2 million units are being curtailed in the form of power cuts,” he said.

According to officials, the maximum power demand in the state is expected to cross 12,000MW between June 30 and July 15. Currently, the state’s maximum demand is 8,300-8,400MW.

Das said if Haryana’s non-functional power plants start generating power, they might just about be able to meet the state’s current demand.

According to senior power officials, one of the two units (2X600MW) at Rajiv Gandhi Thermal Power Plant at Hisar and National Thermal Power Corporation’s plant with a capacity of around 430MW at Faridabad are non-functional.

Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam Limited officials said due to the heavy demand, Gurugram’s maximum load, which during April on average is around 950MW, has crossed 1,400MW this April.