Power desk readies September–October plan as El Niño and outages collide

Andhra Pradesh’s power utilities have prepared a September–October supply plan to handle possible El Niño impacts and keep the grid stable, Special Chief Secretary (Energy) K. Vijayanand said at a Vijayawada review on 1 September 2026.

Speaking at Vidyut Soudha, he said the Andhra Pradesh Power Coordination Committee and DISCOMs had accelerated short-term procurement so consumers get reliable power at economical cost even while thermal stations work through annual maintenance and unforeseen technical issues. Against a base thermal availability of 8,902 MW, August averaged only 5,904 MW because of capital overhaul and repairs at Dr. Narla Tata Rao Thermal Power Station, Rayalaseema Thermal Power Plant, the Hinduja plant in Visakhapatnam, and Sri Damodaram Sanjeevaiah Thermal Power Station.

Despite that constraint, the State met average grid demand of 269 million units a day in August against 223 MU a year earlier—about 20 percent growth. Maximum demand in the month touched 286 MU, just short of the summer peak of 288.75 MU. Vijayanand projected peak demand around 13,500 MW in September and 12,000 MW in October, with minimum demand near 9,600 MW and 9,300 MW in those months.

APPCC and DISCOMs invited DEEP—Discovery of Efficient Electricity Price—tenders on 20 August to cover requirements for the next year. On rooftop solar, he said Andhra Pradesh stood fourth nationally with about 4.93 lakh connections as of 30 August, of which more than 3.01 lakh were installed under the SC and ST Utility-Led Aggregation model.

The meeting drew AP-Genco MD S. Nagalakshmi, AP-Transco Joint MD G. Surya Sai Praveenchand, DISCOM CMDs L. Siva Sankar, I. Prudhvi Tej and P. Pulla Reddy, and other Transco and Genco directors. The policy tension is plain: demand is climbing while a slice of thermal capacity sits offline for overhaul, so short-term markets and DEEP tenders become the bridge into the El Niño-sensitive months. The 1 September record locks the MU and MW figures above, the station outage list, the tender date, and the rooftop-solar tally—without inventing outage durations beyond what the review disclosed. August’s demand jump while thermal units sat in overhaul is the core stress test Vijayanand described. A State that met 269 MU a day with barely two-thirds of baseload thermal available will need the DEEP tenders and short-term purchases to behave when September peaks near 13,500 MW. Rooftop solar’s 4.93 lakh connections help at the margin, especially the 3.01 lakh SC/ST utility-led systems, but midday solar does not erase evening peaks.

El Niño’s rainfall uncertainty feeds directly into agricultural load and hydel availability later in the season. The energy desk’s public message on 1 September was preparedness: a two-month plan, accelerated procurement, and named stations whose outages already cut August thermal output. Compliance will be judged by whether DISCOM schedules hold without emergency load-relief when the first heat-and-cloud swings arrive.