India sees lowest power shortage at 2.1% in FY16
The Dollar Business Bureau
India has seen the lowest ever energy deficit at 2.1% in FY 2016, Power Minister Piyush Goyal informed the Lok Sabha in a written reply on Thursday. He also provided details of power shortage in the country in the previous twenty years as reported by the states and Union Territories.
Currently, India is importing power only from one country Bhutan – mainly due to its surplus power that is produced from its hydel power stations with the Indian government’s assistance. The energy totally imported from Bhutan was more than 5 billion units in FY 2016, as per the data released by the Ministry of Power.
According to the ministry, there is no shortage of coal as well. All over the country, no thermal power plant has faced losses in FY 2016 due to coal scarcity. As on 21st April this year, the coal stock available at thermal plants has been recorded at 37 million tonnes that can be used to run these power utilities for over 25 days. Moreover, no power plant in the country has reported any critical or super critical coal stock position.
Out of 88,537 MW capacity target set during 12th Five Year Plan, a capacity of 84,990.7 MW has been produced by the end of FY 2016. This excludes the target capacity of 30,000 MW from renewal energy sources, the Power Minister said.
To provide uninterrupted coal supply to the power plants, the government has taken various steps that includes allotting coal blocks to state and central power utilities. Coal India would increase its production to 1 billion tonnes by FY2020. The government is also monitoring coal availability at power plants to generate electricity.
The Central Electricity Authority (CEA) also looks after the under construction power projects to solve critical issues if any in commissioning the projects. The Power Project Monitoring Panel was set up by the ministry to monitor on-going thermal and hydro generation projects to be commissioned during the 12th Five Year Plan and later.
Further the government has launched various schemes and allocated huge funds for the development of power sector in the country.
