With a warning of a severe heatwave this summer, which would also push up electricity demand, power distribution companies (discoms) in the national capital are preparing for record demand in the coming months.

       The three privately-owned discoms in public statements said they are expecting demand to cross 8 gigawatts (GW) - a new record for Delhi. Reliance Infra BSES Yamuna Ltd, BSES Rajdhani Ltd, and Tata Power Delhi Distribution Ltd are the privately-run discoms in the capital.

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       “After clocking a record power demand of 7,695 MW in 2022, Delhi’s peak power demand during the summers of 2024 may cross 8 GW for the first time, reaching up to 8.2 GW. Last year, Delhi’s peak power demand had clocked 7.4 GW,” the discoms said in a statement.

       Both TPDDL and BSES stated they are fully geared to provide uninterrupted power supply. “TPDDL uses advanced techniques and avenues like 'Bilateral Agreements', ‘Reserve Shutdown’ and ‘Power Exchange’. In case of any unforeseeable contingency, the company will buy short-term power from the exchange. Adding to these efforts are the advanced load-forecasting statistical and modelling techniques which are helping the company forecast the power demand with greater accuracy,” said a statement by TPDDL, which supplies in North Delhi to a population of 7 million.

       It further said the company’s Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) at Rohini and Rani Bagh will also support providing continuous and reliable power to key customers during any exigency in the summer months.

       BSES, through its two discoms, serves in South, West, East, and some parts of Central Delhi to a population of 25 million. It said power banking arrangements with many states have been made, from where the discoms will get up to 670 MW of power.

       A BSES spokesperson said, "To meet today’s power challenges and to get a grip on so many varied and dynamic variables, BSES uses a mix of advanced statistical forecasting models, combined with state-of-the-art weather forecasting solutions, including Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, and rich domain expertise provided by IMD-POSCO. These analytics help us build models, which lead to high accuracy planning and huge saving of man-hours."

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       BSES said it will also procure around 2.1 GW of green power, of which 0.8 GW is solar power.

       Both the discoms also said they have done predictive maintenance of power supply systems, invested in network strengthening and are ready with forecasting tools to predict fault hotspots.