India States Hit by Power Outages as Coal Supply Still Tight
- Rajasthan saw rolling cuts of up to four hours over weekend
- Spot electricity prices have more than tripled in two weeks
India’s energy crisis is starting to bite with states from Uttar Pradesh to Rajasthan and Kerala hit by blackouts over the weekend.
In Rajasthan in northern India, there were rolling outages of as much as two hours in urban areas and four hours in rural areas, said Subodh Agarwal, the state’s additional chief secretary for energy. Rajasthan has been receiving less than half of its contracted volumes of coal from Coal India Ltd., he said. There were also power shortages in other states including Punjab and Jharkhand, according to government data. Maharashtra, home to the country’s financial capital Mumbai, had 11 gigawatts of capacity under outage on Friday, comprising 35% of its supply sources, for reasons including coal shortages, the data show.