Electricity demand is showing signs of recovery with the easing of lockdown and commercial activity getting back to operation.

Central Electricity Authority (CEA) chairman Prakash Mhaske on Saturday said that the demand met in September was up 2 per cent year-on-year.

“In September 2020, we have met around 177GW of demand against 173GW in September 2019, a growth of about 2 per cent,” said Mhaske at an event organised by CII.

The Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent preventive lockdown had resulted in a slowdown of commercial as well as industrial activities. This had reduced demand by more than 20 per cent during April 2020.

“But after the gradual easing of restrictions, electricity demand has peaked and it reached almost the level of the previous year in August 2020,” he said.

He added that a differential tariff structure where there is over reliance on revenue from commercial and industrial consumers to offset the subsidy given to agriculture and some residential consumers has added to the stress of the power distribution companies.

Discoms are facing cash flow concerns as they had to pay fixed charges to generators even as collection of payments was affected during the lockdown.