India to be power-surplus in 2018-19: CEA

New Delhi: The Central Electricity Authority (CEA) has pegged energy and peak power surplus at 4.6 per cent and 2.5 per cent, respectively, this fiscal, indicating that India will be a power surplus country in 2018-19.

Last year, the CEA in its load generation balancing report (LGBR) had also projected that India would become a power surplus nation in 2017-18. But the peak power deficit was 2.1 per cent while overall electricity deficit was 0.7 per cent across the country in 2017-18. In April-June quarter this fiscal, peak power deficit was 0.7 per cent while overall electricity deficit stood at 0.6 per cent.

"All India power supply position indicates that the country is likely to have a peak surplus of 2.5 per cent and energy surplus of 4.6 per cent," stated the CEA's LGBR for 2018-19.

A power sector expert said, "India is a power surplus state because its installed generation capacity is around 344 GW against the peak demand of not more than 170 GW so far. The deficit in supply is primarily because of discoms' reluctance to buy power. Either they don't have funds to buy power or they are afraid of under-recovery of power bills."

The other reason for power deficit is limitation of transmission and distribution networks particularly in remote and hilly areas, the expert opined.

According to the report, surplus energy is anticipated of the order of 1.9 per cent, 14.8 per cent and 22.9 per cent in the western, northern and north-eastern regions, respectively.

However, it said that eastern and southern regions are likely to face energy shortage of 4.2 per cent and 0.7 per cent respectively which can be met from surplus power in other regions.

The peak surplus of 9.3 per cent, 4.9 per cent, and 12.6 per cent is anticipated in western, eastern and north-eastern regions respectively. Northern, and southern regions are likely to face peak deficit of the order of 1.2 per cent and 4.5 per cent respectively. The anticipated availability of 1,398.7 billion units (BU) energy during 2018-19 is based on the generation programme of 1,265 BU in respect of conventional generation sources, it said.

The generation programme from fossil fuel based generating sources has been arrived at after ensuring full utilisation of the energy that is likely to be available from nuclear & renewable energy sources, it said. The contribution from coal/ lignite based generating stations to the generation programme is 1,044.29 BU.