Electricity demand in the national capital touched 7572 megawatt (Mw) on Monday afternoon, highest-ever for the month of May, even as the sun and hot winds scorched Delhi and neighbouring areas nudging IMD to issue a red alert.

According to the data on the state load dispatch centre (SLDC), Delhi, the maximum load was touched at 1530 hours, crossing the 7,000 Mw mark for the third day in a row.

According to SLDC data, after clocking a record power demand of 7695 Mw in 2022, Delhi’s peak power demand during the summers of 2024 may cross the 8000 Mw for the first time- reaching up to 8200 Mw, said an executive of a power distribution company (discom) in Delhi.

Delhi has three privately owned discoms — Reliance Infra BSES Yamuna Ltd, BSES Rajdhani Ltd and Tata Power Delhi Distribution Ltd.

BSES through its two discoms serves in South, West, East and some parts of Central Delhi to a population of 25 million.

BSES said its two discoms BRPL and BYPL met the peak power demand of 3274 Mw and 1664 Mw, respectively.

A spokesperson of Tata Power Delhi Distribution Ltd. said, “Today, Tata Power-DDL successfully met the peak power demand of 2178 Mw in our area of operations without any network constraint and power outages, the highest so far in the current season.”

On each of the days of May 2024 so far, Delhi’s peak power demand is more than that of May 2023. In the first 20 days of May last year, Delhi’s peak power demand had clocked 5781 Mw. The highest peak power demand recorded in May of 2023 was 6916 MW, said discoms’ executives citing SLDC data.