We have seen a substantial hike in petrol prices in the previous month. If we go by the reasons, one evident reason was increasing central excise duty and the value-added tax but another dominant reason was the dependency of India on imports. Slightly less than 85% of crude oil is imported, only 14% we have with is in reserves. This is a matter of concern. We are, even today, not focusing on renewable energy generation. The efforts have been made in this direction but these are not the substantial and lax implementation of schemes.
In this scenario, a report has been published related to power consumption by the power ministry that states a 47% increase in power consumption. Let’s analyze it.
Power consumption in the country grew nearly 47 percent in the first week of April to 28.34 billion units (BU) over the corresponding period a year ago, showing robust recovery in industrial and commercial demand for electricity, according to power ministry data. Power consumption in the first week of April last year (from April 1 to 7, 2020) was recorded at 19.33 BU.
On the other hand, the peak power demand met, which is the highest supply in a day, during the first week this month remained well above the highest record of 132.20 GW in the same period in April 2020.
During the first week of this month, peak power demand touched the highest level of 181.05 GW on April 7, 2021, and recorded a growth of 27 percent over 132.20 GW recorded in the entire month of April last year.
Power consumption in April last year had dropped to 84.55 BU from 110.11 BU in the same month in 2019. This happened mainly because of fewer economic activities following the imposition of lockdown by the government in the last week of March 2020 to contain the spread of deadly COVID-19.
The experts cautioned that local lockdowns to curb the surge of COVID-19 positive cases may impact power consumption adversely with the slump in commercial and industrial demand for electricity in the coming days. After a gap of six months, power consumption had recorded a 4.6 percent year-on-year growth in September and 11.6 percent in October. In November 2020, the power consumption growth slowed to 3.12 percent, mainly due to the early onset of winters.
