Power Generation during Covid months

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Covid-19 first came in the news towards the end of December 2019, and quickly spread all over the world. A handful of cases were detected in India around Feb 2020, and towards the middle of March, imposition of various sanctions and restrictions had started. A lockdown began around the last week of March, going on till the end of June after which a number of restrictions were removed. The lockdown period saw a significant dip in activity as industries, hotels, educational institutes, entertainment centres, shopping centres etc. were closed down.

So how did this affect the power consumption? With many industrial setups closed, almost all major commercial centres closed and office buildings only partially occupied due to several people working from home, the demand for these sectors was expected to drop. Accordingly, the generation was also brought down. The graphs below (all prepared in Tableau) show a comparison of thermal, nuclear and solar power generation trends in India from February 2018 onwards. Data was taken from the website of the Central Electricity Authority, who maintain a database of daily, monthly and yearly reports on various aspects related to power supply.

Starting with monthly power generation figures from Feb 2018 onwards:

Brown represents thermal power plant generation, yellow represents solar and blue represents nuclear. As expected there are peaks in the summer months, with a total power generation of around 1,10,000 GWH recorded in May 2019. The monsoon months in general in 2018 and 2019 show a dip in production. However, there is a much more pronounced dip from Jan 2020 onwards, with the month of April 2020 recording the minimum production for the entire duration starting Feb 2018 till date.

To get a better insight into the above, let us see the actual generation capacities of these three types.

The different coloured bands in thermal power plants indicate different types of plants based on ownership/control. The dark blue indicates plants under the Central Government, light blue indicates State Government control, orange represents privately-owned independent power producers (IPP) and the thin red band indicates privately owned utility power stations. Independent power producers are privately-owned and controlled, and they sell electricity either to other private players through Power Purchase Agreements or to utilities. As of Jul 2020, the respective monitored capacities for Central, State and IPPs were 70 GW, 74 GW and 84 GW respectively.

The data for solar power plants consists of only the figures specified under names of states in the CEA reports. The reports also contain data for other Centre-owned, private owned and inter-state installations which is mentioned separately, and this data is not being considered here. The total installed capacity of these excluded installations was around 6.35 GW as per the Jul 2020 report.

The total installed capacity of thermal power plants is much higher than solar and nuclear combined. As of Jul 2020, the total monitored capacity of thermal power plants is around 231 GW, with solar around 35 GW and nuclear close to 7 GW. The monitored capacity of nuclear plants has been constant throughout the above duration. Installed capacity of solar power plants has been increasing continuously. It was 23 GW in July 2018, 30 GW in July 2019 and 35 GW in July 2020. Though capacity has been increasing, the rate of increase was found to slow down in 2020.

Given below is a month-by-month comparison.

As observed, solar production was observed to be equal or higher for every month in 2020 compared to the same month in 2019. The opposite holds true for thermal except for Feb 2020. The significant dip in April and May 2020 is visible clearly.

The above graph shows comparative figures for 2018, 2019 and 2020 for the months Feb to July (the required data for these 6 months was available for all 3 years in the CEA reports). From 2019 to 2020, thermal generation has shown a decline while both nuclear and solar have increased. But still there is a clear difference in magnitude as the thermal generation is around the 4,00,000 GWH mark whereas figures for nuclear and solar are less than 1/10th of this.

Now let us take a look at statewise solar generation during Feb-July in 2019 and 2020.


Karnataka, Rajasthan and Telangana are observed to dominate the solar production, with Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu close behind. Punjab, Telangana and Bihar have shown minor decrease in production in 2020 whereas for other states the production in 2020 has been at the same level as, or in some cases, increased significantly, compared to 2019.

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