Ind-Ra: Renewables Outshined Conventional Sources shorm term power prices decline further

India Ratings and Research (Ind-Ra) has published the January edition of its credit news digest on India’s power sector. The report highlights the trends in the power sector, with a focus on capacity addition, generation, transmission, merchant power, deficit, regulatory changes and the recent rating actions.
 
In December 2017, the total power generation increased by 4.0% y-o-y to 104.7 billion units (BUs), driven by an increase in the generation from the renewables, hydro and nuclear power. Power generation from the renewable sources improved substantially by 48.7% y-o-y to 8.1BUs on account of improved generation from wind (74%) and solar (92%) sectors due to higher capacities and improvement in plant load factor. The share of renewables in the total energy generation improved to 8.7% for 9MFY18 from 7.4% in 9MFY17.

In December 2017, while the thermal power generation remained almost flat y-o-y, hydro and nuclear power generation improved by 10% y-o-y and 36% y-o-y, respectively.  In December 2017, all India energy requirements increased 6.3% y-o-y to 97.6BUs; although remaining at almost the same level compared to November 2017, driven by winter season across northern India.
 

Higher power availability from renewable, nuclear and hydro sectors along with no major increase in the demand led to a decline in the demand for short-term power on exchanges in December 2017, compared to previous month. Short-term power prices declined to INR3/unit in December 2017 (November 2017: INR3.55/unit). In December 2017, the difference between the total buy and sell bids at Indian Energy Exchange continued to remain negative, indicating a decline in demand for short-term power.