We now have accurate electricity demand forecasts for upto 2027. This is of enormous importance for gencos, transmission companies, equipment providers, Banks & FIs and state governments. The Central Electricity Authority (CEA) has come out with the Draft National Electricity Plan in two volumes, one covers Generation and the other Transmission. There are deep data dives in the prepared volumes. On Generation, the draft plan says that India has no requirement for new coal based power plants till 2027. This is a result of a combination of factors: power savings, efficiency and conservation, existing projects and those in the pipeline plus massive renewable targets. Besides, energy demand projections have been reduced by a 20 pc over the earlier projections made in the Electric Power Survey. About 50,025 MW of coal based power projects are currently under various stages of construction and they do away with the requirement for new coal-fired power plants till 2027.
But this is problematic for equipment suppliers, a big chunk of the capital goods sector who will get no fresh orders. However, since a good many thermal plants are getting old, there will be refurbishment orders. Companies like BHEL have a manufacturing capacity for power equipment of 20,000 MW a year. And there are a score of domestic firms with jvs that set up capacities for supercritical boilers and supercritical turbines. All are likely to be impacted.
And there is more. CEA has predicted that by 2022, many thermal plants may get partial to no schedule at all because of renewable additions to the grid. Infact CEA calculations show capacity utilization of thermal plants dipping to 48 pc. This will raise the viability question and requirement for policy action.
As for transmission, CEA has said India will not need power transmission projects in addition to the already planned capacity till 2021-22. There is high growth in power transmission capacity.
We also bring to you the details of the performance of Indian Energy Exchange (IEX) in 2016. This story has many statistical graphs, which informs the reader about the Exchange’s behaviour and patterns. The average Market Clearing Price for the year 2016 was Rs 2.40 per unit. Buying bids for 46,716 million units (MUs) were made in the spot market at IEX, out of which 39,133 MUs were cleared. 73,960 MUs were offered for sale. In terms of Megawatt Hours, the clearing volume was 4,467 MWH.
