States should run plants at full capacity to meet growing demand: Power Minister

New Delhi : All states need to run all power plants and at full capacity to meet growing demand, Power and New & Renewable Energy Minister R.K. Singh said on Monday. Addressing a two-day conference of state Power Ministers, he also called upon states to encourage coal blending and use renewable energy sources to power agriculture.

"I am certain that Coal India must have increased production, but our demand has increased faster. This has led to shortages and that’s why we need to do 6 per cent blending. NTPC and DVC are doing the blending, states too should do the blending, depending on shortage of coal," he suggested.

About the challenges, the minister said that while the forthcoming COP-28 meeting is expected to focus on reducing coal usage, India is not going to compromise on availability of power for our growth.

"COP-28 is going to be held in UAE. There is going to be pressure on nations at COP to reduce usage of coal. We are not going to do this, since our point of view is clear, that we are not going to compromise on availability of power for our growth, even if it requires that we add coal-based capacity. At the same time, we need to and we will achieve the targets we had set for ourselves at COP," Singh added.

He pointed out that the second challenge is that of meeting the fast-growing power demand but the government is committed to address it by adding enough capacity. "The demand increased by 20 per cent more than last year, in August, September, and in October 2023. This shows how fast our economy is growing. Also, we met peak demand of 2.41 lakh MW recently while peak demand was 1.9 lakh MW in 2017-18. If the peak demand grows even higher, we may not be able to meet it. This is one challenge we need to address," the minister said.

"To meet growing demand, all states need to run all power plants and at full capacity," he underlined. Singh further said that one way the government has thought of addressing the challenge of growing demand is that all power plants need to be run and at full capacity.

"We observe that some states do not run their power plants at peak capacity and instead seek power from the Centre’s pool. If some state is not running their plants at peak demand, we will not be able to supplement from the central pool. We have to focus on making sure that all our plants run and all our plants run at full capacity," he said.