Lighting ups power demand

Raj said the peak demand this year was higher also because Diwali had arrived before the onset of winter.

With residents of the national capital lighting up their homes to celebrate Diwali on Thursday, the city recorded a relatively high peak demand in power consumption, especially compared to the demand last year.

North and Northwest Delhi clocked around 804 MW as compared to 720 MW last year. Districts in Central and East Delhi saw a peak demand of around 813 MW as against 729 MW clocked last year.

However, South and West districts saw the highest demand in power consumption. The 19 districts under these areas clocked around 1,348 MW, against 2,953 MW last year.

“The overall consumption of power reduces during Diwali, as the largest consumers — commercial set ups and industries — are shut down. But the increase in consumption over last year can be partly attributed to extra power used to light up homes,” spokesperson of Delhi Transco Limited Rishi Raj said.

Raj said the peak demand this year was higher also because Diwali had arrived before the onset of winter. “Last year, diwali was celebrated during winter. So power consumption was lower. But this year, the festival arrived before the winter,” he said.

Sources in the power distribution companies (discom) too said the increase in demand was owing to the additional lighting arrangements people made for the festival.

“Although additional lighting does not consume too much power, the volume that attributes to higher demand. If you see the numbers in the South district, almost every home was lit up. So there was a significant increase,” a discom source said.

Kaunain Sheriff M

Kaunain Sheriff M is an award-winning investigative journalist and the National Health Editor at The Indian Express. He is the author of Johnson & Johnson Files: The Indian Secrets of a Global Giant, an investigation into one of the world’s most powerful pharmaceutical companies. With over a decade of experience, Kaunain brings deep expertise in three areas of investigative journalism: law, health, and data. He currently leads The Indian Express newsroom’s in-depth coverage of health. His work has earned some of the most prestigious honours in journalism, including the Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism, the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) Award, and the Mumbai Press Club’s Red Ink Award. Kaunain has also collaborated on major global investigations. He was part of the Implant Files project with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which exposed malpractices in the medical device industry across the world. He also contributed to an international investigation that uncovered how a Chinese big-data firm was monitoring thousands of prominent Indian individuals and institutions in real time. Over the years, he has reported on several high-profile criminal trials, including the Hashimpura massacre, the 2G spectrum scam, and the coal block allocation case. Within The Indian Express, he has been honoured three times with the Indian Express Excellence Award for his investigations—on the anti-Sikh riots, the Vyapam exam scam, and the abuse of the National Security Act in Uttar Pradesh. ... Read More

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