There is no shortage of electricity in the country: Power Minister R. K. Singh
Power Minister R. K. Singh has said that there is no shortage of electricity in the country. In a written reply in the Lok Sabha today, Mr Singh said, against a peak demand of 200 GigaWatts, the established generation capacity is 382 GigaWatts.
He said, interruptions in the supply of electricity is generally on account of constraints in the distribution network, or financial constraints with some distribution companies not having the money to pay for power.
The Minister said, as per independent surveys, the availability of power in rural areas has gone up from an average of 12 hours in 2015-16 to 20.6 hours in 2020. He said, in the urban areas, the availability of power has gone up to 22 hours. Mr Singh said, in May this year, the average availability of power in the rural areas was 22.17 hours and in urban areas it was 23.33 hours.
The Minister said, many States and Union Territories have reported 24×7 power supply other than the planned outages and interruptions due to unforeseen events.
