Power ministry mulls advisory amid El Niño uncertainty

According to officials aware of the discussions, the Power Ministry’s advisory is expected to focus on a few key areas, including ensuring fuel and water availability for thermal plants, preventing outages, safeguarding critical transmission assets, and shifting more agricultural demand to solar hours. It is likely to stress the need for thermal power plants to maintain adequate coal stocks and ensure reliable water availability, particularly in the event of deficient rainfall, for which state governments may be asked to facilitate supply. Thermal power stations are also expected to undertake preventive maintenance to minimise forced and partial outages during periods of high demand.

Generating companies and transmission utilities may also be asked to identify critical transmission lines, transformers and other network elements vulnerable to heavy loading or overloading, so that preventive measures can be taken in advance.  The advisory is also likely to encourage states to shift agricultural power demand to solar hours to better utilise abundant daytime solar generation.

Queries sent to the Ministry of Power remained unanswered till the time of filing this report. There are concerns that deficient rainfall could adversely affect both hydroelectric and wind power generation. In such a scenario, if output from these sources declines sharply, the power system may have to rely more heavily on coal-based generation to bridge the gap.