With the onset of summer, the Centre on Tuesday said that there will not be any power crises as the installed electricity generation capacity stood at 395.6 gigawatts (GW) against the peak demand of 203 GW recorded in 2021-22.
Union Power Minister R K Singh in his written reply to the Rajya Sabha said that as on February 28, 2022, the installed generation capacity is around 395.6 GW, which is sufficient to meet the demand of electricity in the country. The peak demand experienced during the current year was only 203 GW, he said
Total 1,16,766 MW of power generation capacity is under construction, including 72,606 MW renewable (including large hydro projects), 15,700 MW nuclear and 28,460 MW thermal, the Minister said.
To meet the increasing demand for power in the country , the government is building more power generating units, he said.
On coal supply to power plants, the Minister said that as per the information compiled by the Central Electricity Authority (CEA), the import of coal reduced to 22.7 MT (million tonnes) during 2021-22 (April-January) as against 39 MT during the same period last year, mainly due to high imported coal price in the international market.
The shortfall in imported coal has been compensated through the enhanced supply of domestic coal i.e. from 442.6 MT during 2020-21 (April-January) to 547.2 MT during 2021-22 (April-January).
To reduce the pressure on coal-based generation to a large extent, the government aimed at achieving 500 GW installed capacity from non-fossil fuel-based capacity (hydro, nuclear, solar, wind, biomass, etc.) by 2030, the Minister said.
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(Published 15 March 2022, 16:56 IST)
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