The power demand outpaces the supply of power and this gap will be maximum in July at 31% (1512 million units (MUs) followed by 26% (1245 MUs) in August and 797 MUs in May. The Demand/Supply gap of power will remain between -488 LUs to - 266 Lac units per day during coming summer/paddy season.

PSPCL has made banking arrangement with other utilities to receive around 900 MUs in a year and out of this 600 MUs will be taken during paddy season. The power demand has been based upon presumption that there will be 5% increase in power demand in 2013-14 over last year’s actual demand.

As per the petition, there was an unprecedented rise in demand during the year 2012-13 and the maximum unrestricted demand of Punjab was recorded as 11520 MW on July 25, and in terms of energy an unrestricted demand of 2274 LUs was recorded on July 3.

After the last grid collapse, Northern Regional Load Dispatch Centre has imposed the restrictions on over drawing of power from the grid. The present TTC / ATC limit of Punjab is fixed at 5400 MW / 5100 MW respectively, which makes it difficult to meet the requirement of load beyond 8500-8600 MW within the grid code limitations. As such, the regulation of power becomes mandatory to maintain grid discipline.

Further, the exigencies of forced outage of any of the generating plant have not been taken into account and the probable date of commissioning of the new generating units can also be considered as uncertain.