In April 2019, short-term power prices declined 19.1% year-on-year to Rs 3.22 per unit.
Kolkata: Increased power supplies from various sources, in comparison to demand, has subdued its prices at the exchanges over the last two months, India Ratings & Research has said in a recent release.
According to Ind-Ra, short-term power prices did not see any major movement during May 2019, as hydro generation remained strong due to a better snow season in FY19. Coal availability with thermal generators has also improved, with coal inventory increasing almost 99% year-on-year to 31.6 million tonnes (mt) in April 2019 (April 2018: 15.9mt). Coal production increased 1.0% year-on-year to 45.3mt in April 2019.
With improvement in coal inventory, the number of power stations with subcritical levels of coal inventory decreased to two in April 2019 from 28 in April 2018.
Improvement in private sector capacity utilisation can be attributed to improvement in AdaniNSE -0.10 % Power Limited’s Mundra plant’s owing to reduction in their coal costs. Capacity utilisation of the Mundra plant, which has a capacity of 4620MW, rose to 83.43% in April 2019 (April 2018: 3.88%). Plant capacity utilisation of central and state sector declined 170bp and 300bp, respectively, in April 2019.
In April 2019, as energy supply increased at a slightly higher rate than energy demand, energy deficit and peak deficit narrowed to 0.4% (April 2018: 0.5%) and 0.3% (0.9%), respectively. With the onset of summer season, energy demand increased 1.4% on a month-on-month basis.
During FY19, 12.1GW of generating capacity was added, driven by an 8.6GW addition in the renewable segment and 3.5GW in the thermal segment. The renewable capacity addition was driven by a solar capacity addition of 6.5GW and a wind capacity addition of 1.6GW during FY19. Despite slower thermal capacity addition, India’s power segment remains reliant on thermal generation, which had a total capacity of 200.7GW as of April 2019.
Source: IndRa
