The Central Electricity Authority (CEA) has issued an advisory to discoms for minimising load shedding and improving the reliability of power supply during periods of peak electricity demand, particularly in summer. The advisory notes that most summer outages arise from distribution network constraints, such as overloaded transformers and feeders, inadequate preventive maintenance, delayed network augmentation and poor visibility of emerging load growth. It sets out immediate (within one year) and medium-term (one to three years) measures to strengthen summer preparedness and system reliability.
The CEA has advised discoms to undertake annual load assessments and scientific short- and medium-term load forecasting using consumer demand trends, weather conditions, urban development and smart meter data. It has also recommended completing summer preparedness reviews by February every year to identify overloaded transformers and feeders, low-voltage areas, and rapidly growing load centres. In addition, the advisory calls for preventive network maintenance before the onset of summer, along with wider use of smart meters, GIS-based dashboards and data analytics for monitoring and timely augmentation. Over the medium term, discoms have been advised to undertake scientific distribution planning, deploy smart distribution infrastructure and adopt predictive monitoring.