The Central Electricity Authority (CEA) has notified the National Electricity Plan (NEP) (Vol-I Generation) for the period of 2022-32. The plan document includes the review of the last five years (2017 to 2022), a detailed plan for the next five years (2022-27) and the prospective plan for the other next five years (2027-32). According to the NEP document, the projected all India peak electricity demand and electrical energy requirement is 277.2 GW and 1907.8 BU for 2026-27 and 366.4 GW and 2473.8 BU for 2031-32 as per the demand projections of 20th Electric Power Survey (EPS). The energy requirement and peak demand are inclusive of the impact due to increased adoption of electric vehicles, installation of solar rooftops, production of green hydrogen, Saubhagya scheme amongst many others.
Based on generation planning studies carried out under the purview of preparation of NEP for 2022-27, the likely installed capacity for 2026-27 is 609,591 MW comprising of 273,038 MW of conventional capacity and 336,553 MW of renewable based capacity along with battery energy storage system (BESS) of 8,680MW/34,720 MWh.
The likely installed capacity for 2031-32 is estimated to be 900,422 MW comprising 304,147 MW of conventional capacity and 596,275 MW of renewable based capacity along with BESS capacity of 47,244MW/236,220MWh. The projection of total capacity addition is in line with the target of the country to achieve a non-fossil based installed capacity of around 500 GW by the year 2029-30.
NEP envisages that the share of non-fossil based capacity is likely to increase to 57.4 per cent by the end of 2026-27 and may likely to further increase to 68.4 per cent by the end of 2031-32 from around 42.5 per cent as on April 2023.The average plant load factor of the total installed coal capacity of 235.1 GW is likely to be about 58.4 per cent in 2026-27 and that of 259.6 GW of coal based capacity is likely to be about 58.7 per cent in 2031-32.As per the NEP projections, the energy storage capacity of 16.13 GW/82.37 GWh with pumped storage plants based storage of 7.45 GW capacity and 47.65 GWh storage and BESS based storage of 8.68 GW/ 34.72 GWh is required by the year 2026-27. The storage capacity requirement increases to 73.93 GW with storage of 411.4 GWh by 2031-32.
The domestic coal requirement has been estimated to be 866.4 Million tonnes for 2026-27 and 1025.8 Million tonnes for 2031-32 and an estimated requirement of 28.9 MT of coal imports for the plants designed to run on imported coal. The average emission factor is expected to reduce to 0.548 kg carbon dioxide per kWhnet in 2026-27 and to 0.430 kg carbon dioxide per kWhnet by the end of 2031-32.
