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Power
Power demand rises 10% in AprilNovember, coal keeps pace
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India’s power demand, a key indicator of economic growth, jumped more than 10% in the April-November period of the current financial year, indicating a strong recovery. Government data shows coal-fired generation meeting 71% of the demand, making it clear that black diamond will continue to occupy the centre stage amid rapid growth in power demand. Consider: all sources put together generated 978 billion units (BU) during the period under review, while coal-fired plants accounted for 696 BUs. Indeed, coal-fired plants stepped up generation by 14% to bridge the gap left by a 28% fall in output from stations running on imported coal and 43% from imported gas as a sharp rise in their prices made them uneconomical for cashstrapped distribution companies. Coal India’s production has registered a 5.6% growth dispatch rose 19% in the April-November period compared to the same period of last year. Production from captive mines rose nearly 56%.
The Union Power ministry was working on resource adequacy plan guidelines to ensure
24x7 power supply to the consumers, a senior official said..
The ministry was also discussing some bigger reforms to make discoms viable and was working on steps like de-regulating the sector or making regulation adaptability more industry friendly, the official said. Resource adequacy is the ability of a utilities' reliable capacity resources (supply) to meet the customers' energy or system loads (demands) at all hours The factor that affects supply is the availability of sufficient dispatchable capacity resources in order to meet the demand.
A focus on 24x7 power can be ensured if discoms properly have resource adequacy in place. There are a few private players who are working in this direction. Working on resource adequacy plan guidelines so that discoms can be integrated at the state level and then more at national level. The advantage will be lesser resource requirement
Power Minister urges States to be financially viable in view of high oustanding dues of gencos
Union Minister RK Singh has urged States to be financially viable in view of the mounting outstanding dues of power generation companies. This will help attract investments in the power sector and also benefit the consumers through reduced cost of electricity and improved consumer services, he said.
Singh said, the country has become power surplus; we have connected the whole country into one grid, and strengthened the distribution system. These steps have increased the power availability to 22 hours in rural areas and 23.5 hours in urban areas. The next step is to take it to 24X7 guaranteed power supply at affordable price. The matter of increasing overdues of power generation firms (gencos) was also deliberated and it was advised that distribution companies (discoms) must immediately undertake loss reduction measures through proper metering, billing and energy accounting. It was reiterated that improved financial sustainability of the discoms will not only attract investments in the power sector as a whole but will also benefit the consumers through reduced cost of electricity and improved consumer services.
In order to achieve the objective of providing 24x7 uninterrupted power supply to consumers, the Centre has recently launched the Revamped Distribution Sector Scheme having total outlay of 3 lakh crore
Power Ministry achieves 63.4% of capex target at 32,137 cr in FY22
The CPSEs of the Ministry of Power have so far achieved a CAPEX of 32,137 crore, which is 63.4 per cent of the annual the CAPEX target, the government said. The central public sector enterprises' (CPSEs) capital expenditure target for FY22 stands at 50,690.52 crore.
FY 2020-21, power sector CPSEs incurred the CAPEX of 22,127 crore till November, which was 49.3 per cent of the total expenditure in that year. Even in the schemes for infrastructure development, the ministry said it has spent 1,593.72 crore in IPDS; 1007.51 crore in DDUGJY and ₹890 crore in transmission development schemes for the North Eastern region. "Hence, besides the expenditure of 32,137.37 crore by CPSEs, an additional amount of 3491.23 crore has been invested in infrastructure through development schemes of the ministry. In all, till the end of November, the power ministry has invested 35,628.6 crore in infrastructure development," it said.
61% of power plants to miss meeting their 2022 deadline on emission standards
Sixty-one percent of the coal-based power plants located near million-plus population cities, which have to meet their emission standards by December 2022, will miss their deadlines, shows an analysis of three different
categories of power plants whose new targets to meet the green norms were set by the environment ministry early this year. The power plants which have to meet the December next year target are those which are located within 10 km radius of the National Capital Region (NCR) or cities having millionplus population. There are 79 coal-based power plants in this category (Category A) as per a categorisation list of a task force, constituted by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB). The task force, disaggregating 596 coal thermal power plants from across the country, had on December 13 released the list, putting 68 power plants in Category B (compliance deadline of December, 2023) and 449 in Category C (compliance deadline of December, 2024). The analysis, done by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), shows that 48 of 79 power plants (61%) in Category A will miss their emission standards deadlines -- it means the non-compliant power plants will continue to emit pollutants more than their acceptable limits, polluting air in the million-plus population cities.
Coal units in 10 states asked to install anti-emission gear
The government has asked 79 coal-based power plants totalling 20,500-MW near million plus cities in 10 states including Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and UP to install equipment to curb emission of poisonous sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide gases, by this month end, while 517 others have been given timeline relaxations.
According to the revised categorisation of thermal power plants by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), these 79 coal-fired power plants near populated and already polluted cities. Delhi, Chennai, Kota, Greater Mumbai, Nagpur, Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada have been marked in the Category-A of the new norms. Projects in this category that fail to comply with the timeline will have to pay a penalty of 10 paise per unit of electricity generated upto 180 days of non-compliance, 15 paise between 181 days to 365 days and 20 paise per unit after 366 days. Sixty eight projects with 22 GW capacities have been classified in Category B which have to comply with the Flue-gas desulfurisation norms by December 2023. Penalties for this category range between 7 paise per unit of electricity generated to 15 paise
52 coal-fired thermal projects in pipeline in India; lion’s share with TN
Even though India is striving to cut down on its coal consumption, as many as 52 coal-based thermal projects are at various stages of commissioning across the country, with Tamil Nadu accounting for a major share. The state boasts of seven thermal projects while other states have between two and six thermal projects in the pipeline. “Though the world may want India to lower burning of coal, the base power in the grid is as of now totally dependent on thermal power. Unless we change this and find an alternative to coal, India’s dependence on thermal power will not come down,” said former Union power secretary Anil Razdan. There is not less than 5800MW of thermal coal power projects in the pipeline. Beyond North Chennai, other thermal projects planned in Udangudi and Ennore SEZ will take at least two to three years as only groundwork has been initiated in these units. Two units planned in Uppur in Ramanathapuram district have been changed to Udangudi and thus these two units with a capacity of 800MW each may see the light only after four to five years
.Power minister approves 23 new
Union power minister R K Singh has approved 23 new inter-state transmission system projects worth Rs 15,893 crore. The new inter-state transmission system (ISTS) projects comprise 13 projects with an estimated cost of Rs 14,766
crore to be developed under Tariff Based Competitive Bidding (TBCB) and 10 projects with an estimated cost of Rs 1,127 crore to be developed under Regulated Tariff Mechanism (RTM), a power ministry statement said. It further said that the Union Minister of Power and New and Renewable Energy has approved new 23 ISTS projects "with an estimated cost of Rs 15,893 crore".
The new transmission projects would interalia facilitate evacuation system for 14 GW of renewable projects in Rajasthan, 4.5 GW of RE projects in Gujarat, 1 GW Neemuch Solar Park, Madhya Pradesh and feeding areas near Akhnoor and Jammu region by establishing Siot Substation in Jammu.
National Electricity Policy: Govt panel recommends tough norms to start new coal-based units
In its recommendations concerning the National Electricity Policy (NEP), a panel constituted by the Union power ministry has highlighted the objective of ‘decarbonisation’ to cut carbon footprint in power generation and consumption. The committee is said to have recommended that new coal-based power plants can be constructed to replace older units of similar capacities, only after “it is convincingly established that it is not viable to meet the projected demand from alternate non-fossil sources”. However, it acknowledged that “coal-based generation will continue to be needed to meet the base load and balancing requirements till commercially viable energy storage solutions are developed and available at scale”.
It has also suggested retrofitting existing coalbased power plants to make them more flexible, so that they can easily start up or shut down according to generation from solar and wind plants. Higher use of technologies such as pumped hydropower plants, battery storage and other emerging technologies have also been recommended, which would address the issues of intermittency of electricity supply from renewable energy-based sources
Short-term power market to grow in coming days, says CERC Chairperson P K Pujari
Share of the short-term electricity market will grow in future with lesser fructification of longterm power purchase agreements, Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) Chairperson P K Pujari said. In short-term market, consumers like captive users or discoms buy power either at energy exchanges or directly from generating firms (gencos) under open access. This is different from conventional PPAs where consumers buy electricity for a term as long as 25 years. Pujari stated that currently the short-term market share ranges from 6-7 seven per cent which would grow in future. In the dynamic power scenario where consumers have access to different short-term market products like real time market, day ahead market and term ahead market, among others. Last year in June, real time market (RTM) was launched where consumers, including distribution companies (discoms) and captive users, can buy power on exchanges just an hour before delivery.
IEX power trade volume grew 54% to 9,477 MUs in November
Electricity trade volume at Indian Energy Exchange (IEX) rose nearly 54 per cent year-onyear in November this year to 9,477 million units (MUs). "The Indian Energy Exchange realized 9,477 MU cleared volume in November 2021 comprising 6,333 MU in the Conventional Power Market, 457 MU in the Green Power Market and 2687 MU in the Certificate Market comprising ESCerts and REC. Overall, the exchange realised 53.8 per cent YoY growth across all its market segments," an IEX statement said. The Day-Ahead Market achieved 4,719 MU volume in November seeing a 3 per cent YoY decline. The average monthly price at Rs. 3.1 per unit saw a significant 62 per cent monthon-month (MoM) price reduction mainly due to
increased liquidity on the supply-side with the sell-bids at 1.8X of the cleared volume.
The Term-Ahead Market comprising intra-day, contingency, daily and weekly contracts traded 302.7 MU during the month and recorded 23.4 per cent YoY growth. The Real-time Electricity Market achieved 1311 MU volume seeing a significant 47 per cent YoY growth. The average monthly price was at Rs 3.48 per unit.
India’s clean energy got more loans than coal for third year
Indian lenders channeled more funds to clean energy projects compared to coal-based ones for a third straight year in 2020 with more expected to flow into the renewables sector in the coming years after Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled ambitious goals last month for cutting emissions. Clean energy projects got 74% of the total funds from financial institutions last year, or 243.8 billion rupees ($3 billion), according to a report by New Delhi-based research organizations Climate Trends and Centre for Financial Accountability. That’s a 6% rise from 2019 approvals for clean energy projects of about 229.71 billion rupees in 2019. Just 85.2 billion rupees, or 26% of the 2020 funds from Indian lenders went to coal-fired plants, data from the report showed. This represents an 86% slump in approvals for coal plants since 2017 and is in line with declining availability of funds globally for fossil-fuel projects. This trend is expected to continue after Modi announced India’s plan for net zero emissions by 2070 at COP26. Modi also raised India’s 2030 target for low-emission energy capacity to 500 gigawatt from 450 GW and to wants the country to generate half its electricity using renewable energy.
India can potentially achieve 500 GW non-fossil fuel target
A power ministry official said that the country can potentially achieve the 500 gigawatt (GW) non fossil fuel capacity before its stated deadline of 2030. According to a statement from the Union ministry of new and renewable energy, total non-fossil fuel based installed energy capacity was 156.83 GW, which is 40.1 per cent of the total installed electricity generation capacity of 390.8 GW. A target of 500 GW has now been set to be achieved by 2030. The government has recently issued revised guidelines to thermal power generating companies to set up renewable capacities either by themselves or through developers and supply power to customers with existing power purchase agreements (PPAs). This will enable replacement of fossil fuels under existing PPAs. Moreover, the distribution companies will also be allowed to count the renewable energy supplied under the scheme towards renewable power purchase obligation.
The ministry is working on guidelines on resource adequacy that will allow better contingency planning in peak power months. With 1 million square meters of commercial space and 3 million square meters of residential space coming up in the next few years, there would be a significant jump in the peak load of discoms due to cooling needs.
Adani agrees Indian solar deal with SECI
Indian private-sector renewables firm Adani Green Energy (AGEL) has signed a deal with the state-controlled Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) to supply 4,667MW of renewable power generation capacity, as part of a manufacturing-linked solar tender first agreed in 2020.
AGEL has signed a power purchase agreement with SECI for a total generation capacity of close to 6,000MW of the 8,000MW awarded in June 2020, with the balance expected to be agreed on in the next 2-3 months. India has 48,557MW of installed generation capacity for solar, according to the power ministry, while AGEL has 4,763MW of solar power capacity in operation and 10,080MW under construction. TotalEnergies has a 20pc
stake in AGEL, with an agreement to buy a 50pc stake in its operating solar assets.
India added about 11.1 GW of solar capacity from January 2021 till November 2021. This is about 249% higher compared to the installations done in 2020, according to a report by JMK Research.
In terms of cumulative installations, according to the data released by Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), till November 2021, India’s RE installation capacity reached ~104 GW. Solar energy now contributes for approximately 47% share in the total RE segment now making it the largest contributor followed by wind energy (38%), Bio Power (10%) and Small Hydro (5%).
According to the report, during Jan-Nov 2021 period, about 7 GW of utility scale solar was added. Rajasthan added the highest utility scale solar capacity of about 3,615 MW, followed by Gujarat (1,538 MW) and Uttar Pradesh (674 MW).
In the rooftop solar segment, about 2605 MW of new capacity was added during January to November 2021 period.
UN's 'observer' status to ISA will aid OSOWOG: Minister R K Singh
Union Minister R K Singh said granting of 'observer' status to the International Solar Alliance by the United Nations will give impetus to the One Sun One World One Grid(OSOWAG) initiative.
In a congratulatory tweet, the Power and New & Renewable Energy Minister said this historic decision of the UN is going to be a stepping stone in furtherance of the Prime Minister's vision of OSOWAG.
This will provide a big boost to the initiative to bring about just and equitable energy solutions through the deployment of solar energy, he further said.
Singh also highlighted that the decision would immensely help towards achieving the goal of net zero carbon emissions through global co-operations. He reaffirmed that India is progressively contributing to this mission by having a a significant share of renewable energy in the power mix.
PM Modi to launch Rs 11,281 crore hydro power projects in Shimla on 27 Dec
Prime Minister Narendra Modi would dedicate and lay the foundation stone of development projects worth Rs 11,281 crore in Himachal Pradesh on December 27 on completion of four years tenure of the BJP government.
The projects to be dedicated include 111 MW Sawra-Kuddu Hydro Electric Project (HEP) constructed with an outlay of Rs 2,081.60 crore on river Pabbar in Shimla district. The project would generate 386 Million units of electricity per annum which will generate annual revenue of about Rs 120 crore to the state, a spokesperson of the state government said.
The Prime Minister would lay the foundation stone of Shri Renuka ji Dam project, a national project conceived as a storage project of Rs 6,700 crore on Giri river in Sirmaur. The project would generate 200 Million units of energy in a surface power house with 40 MW installed capacity which would be utilised by the state.
The live storage of the dam would be 498 Million Cubic Metres, which would fulfill about 40 per cent of the drinking water requirement of Delhi.
He would also lay the foundation stone of 210 MW Luhri Hydro Electric Project stage-I to be completed with an expenditure of Rs 1811 crore, a joint venture between Government of India and Government of Himachal Pradesh. The project is located on Sutlej in Shimla and Kullu districts.
