CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu has been forced to step up electricity purchases from the power market at over Rs 20 per unit, as wind power generation fell sharply in September and the state's power demand surged by nearly 3,000 MW, compared with the same period last year.
Electricity minister CTR Nirmal Kumar said on Tuesday that the state had purchased 2,000 MW last week and was set to buy another 1,500 MW to compensate for the further decline in wind power generation. This takes the additional power procured because of the wind power deficit to 3,500 MW.
"Last year, power demand during this period was around 16,000 MW. This year, it is around 19,000 MW. The demand is about 3,000 MW higher. Besides, wind power generation has fallen by around 1,500 MW," he said.
The minister said power was being purchased, despite market rates crossing Rs 20 per unit on some days, to avoid load shedding. "Other states are resorting to load shedding because of the high market rates. We are purchasing power so that the public does not face hardships,” he said.
Nirmal Kumar maintained that Tamil Nadu was not currently facing a power shortage and that there had been no major outages attributable to the deficit. Isolated interruptions, he said, were due to routine failures such as transformer or equipment breakdowns.
The minister said the government was working to reduce its dependence on expensive short-term market purchases by entering into long-term power purchase agreements. Some of the agreements are expected to start supplying power from October.
With solar power generation peaking during the daytime and the major demand surging in the evening and night hours, the state is preparing a battery energy storage policy, which will be launched within 10 days, the minister said.
Tamil Nadu has already crossed 30,000 MW of installed solar capacity. "We have exhausted the transmission capacity. The problem is that solar power is not available after around 3pm. So, when we have a shortage of 1,000 to 2,000 MW during peak hours, we need battery storage to bridge the gap," he explained.
The government is also working on a single-window portal for domestic rooftop solar applications, incorporating both state and central subsidies.
On reports of power cuts at political events and other venues, Nirmal Kumar said some incidents were caused by local equipment failures and not by a power shortage. But media houses supported by some opposition parties were using old videos to project power cuts as current incidents.