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Unrelenting heat in India pushes April power demand to record high
India's electricity demand touched a record high in April as its northern states reeled under the hot pre-summer.
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A caretaker bathes an elephant on a hot summer day inside the facility of Wildlife Conservation Organization in Farah in India's Uttar Pradesh state on May 1, 2022. (Agence France-Presse/Pawan Sharma)
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ndia's electricity demand touched a record high in April as its northern states reeled under the hottest pre-summer months in decades, with a surge in the use of air conditioning triggering the worst power crisis in more than six years.
Power demand grew 13.2 percent to 135.4 billion kilowatt hours (kWh), as the electricity requirement in the north grew between 16 percent and 75 percent, a Reuters analysis of government data showed.
Electricity use is expected to grow as India's weather office has forecast above normal maximum temperatures over most parts of the west central, northwest, north and northeast.
India and neighboring Pakistan have been suffering from extreme heat this year and more than a billion people are at risk from the heat, scientists have warned, linking the early onset of an intense summer to climate change.
The unprecedented electricity use resulted in widespread power cuts in April, as utilities scrambled to manage demand as coal supplies dwindled. Power supply fell short of demand by 2.41 billion units, or 1.8 percent, the worst since October 2015.
Demand for power in Delhi rose 42 percent in April, with northern states such as Punjab and Rajasthan seeing electricity demand grow 36 percent and 28 percent respectively, government data showed.
Soaring temperatures lead to a 74.7 percent rise in electricity use by Sikkim, a small hilly state in the northeast famous for its scenic mountains.
