In October, India is under the worst power shortage since March 2016 due to coal shortage.
During the first 12 days of the month, the power supply plunged by around 750 million kWh, meaning a deficit of 1.6% or the worst in 5.5 years.
So far in the month, the shortfall was the biggest in absolute terms for a single month since November 2018, even with 19 days of October still left and already makes up for 21.6% of the total deficit this year.
The worst affected areas by the shortfall were Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh in the north and Jharkhand and Bihar in the east. They register supply deficits of 2.3%-14.7%. Bihar, Rajasthan, and Jharkhand have resulted to cut power for up to 14 hours a day.
According to India’s power ministry, the capacity of power plants under outage because of a coal shortage had fallen nearly to 6 GW on Wednesday, from 11 GW on Tuesday.
Coal accounts for over 70% of India's electricity generation, and coal-fired plants make up 208.6 GW, or 54%, of the country's installed power capacity.
Last month, India’s reliance on coal-fired power was at 66.5% but now it has jumped to 69.6%, which aggravates the coal shortage amid a drop in output from other sources such as wind and hydro.
Data showed that more than 60% of India's 135 coal-fired power plants have fuel stocks of less than three days. The share of output from renewable energy so far in October dipped to 8.34% from 11.33% in September, while hydro energy output fell by 1.3%.
