New Delhi, November 25: Maharashtra stands as the single largest consumer of electricity in India, followed by Uttar Pradesh and Telangana. With a demand for 75,169 million units (MU) during April to September, revealed data carried out by Central Electricity Authority.
With the increasing demand, there was an increase of 8.6% over the demand for 69,216 MU in the year ago. Among the larger states, Uttar Pradesh showed a growth of 15.37% year-on-year to 65,284 MU. Rajasthan and Telangana too showed good growth of 54.8% and 15.34%, respectively. Tripura with a consumption of around 1,000 MU saw its demand grow at a whopping 94.39%.
Overall, these states pushed up the all-India demand for power to 589,234 MU in the first half of fiscal 2018, an increase of 5.2% over a year ago. This growth would have been higher but for the drag from some other states. Tamil Nadu saw growth slip by 0.42% from a year ago. Madhya Pradesh’s demand was almost unchanged, while Gujarat’s demand rose by only 0.57%.
Rating agency Investment Information and Credit Rating Agency ICRA Ltd warned in a recent report that it is unclear whether such high growth overall would be sustainable. It said even in the first six months of the previous financial year, growth was high at 4.9%, but it slowed down afterwards to a cumulative 2.6% for the entire year.
“Energy demand growth has been subdued in the last two-three year period, which in turn has resulted in a decline in the energy deficit levels in the country. Weak energy demand growth is also a result of subdued demand from industrial consumer segment (which accounts for about 30% share in overall energy demand in the country) and the paying capacity constraints for state-owned distribution utilities,” ICRA said in its report.