In the summer of 2024, when it seemed like power consumption was starting to get out of control, the Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB) wanted people to avoid charging their e-vehicles in the evening. The power utility had a reason for this. Consumption levels generally increase after 6 pm, especially in summer when air-conditioners are the best weapon to beat the heat. But the sharp rise in e-vehicle numbers that year had opened up a new battlefield for KSEB. Car batteries, which are still in development, take a long time to charge, increasing electricity demand. By May next year, guidelines were implemented to promote EV charging during daylight hours with lower tariffs.
Cut to summer 2026. A new ‘villain’ was added to the script. Electric cooktops first made headlines when the West Asia crisis led to an unprecedented LPG shortage in Kerala. As March ended and April came, bringing with it the power crisis, electric cooking appliances also got included in the story of reasons for increase in electricity consumption. Air-conditioners, no longer a luxury item in Kerala’s humid climate, remain the main culprits along with EV charging and use of energy-hungry electrical appliances in the evening.
danger of power cut
With seasonal summer rains still in the deficit zone, electricity demand after 6 pm in Kerala crossed 6000 megawatt (MW) for the first time during the summer of 2026. On April 18, this record reached 6033 MW. Daily electricity consumption surged to an unprecedented 118.26 million units (MU) on April 26, raising fears of officially sanctioned load shedding and power cuts, which Kerala has remained untouched by in recent years. A high-level meeting of the power department and the Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB) on April 28 finally decided to impose ‘load restrictions’ of less than 30 minutes between 6 pm and midnight in unavoidable circumstances to maintain the stability of the power grid.
Fortunately for KSEB and the public, the ban did not last long as summer rains intensified in the state, reducing consumption. In fact, e-cooking is the latest addition to the growing list as Kerala’s electricity dependence continues to increase year by year.
due to crisis
All this has served to highlight one thing this summer: the inability or, as KSEB’s more harsh critics charge, the unwillingness of the power system to adapt to the growth of renewable energy. Experts and the ‘prosumer’ category – consumers who are also power producers – feel that KSEB is ignoring the real imperative; The need for a system that supports changes in the field. Effective integration of renewable energy, especially solar energy generated by consumers during the day, into the grid is creating problems for KSEB, mainly due to inadequacies in the power system.
“Nobody can stop the growth of solar energy. It is a reality,” says Jameskutty Thomas, a consumer representing the Kerala domestic solar consumer community. He estimates that solar units in the state generate around 6 to 8 million units (MU) per day. “But the problem is that KSEB does not have a system to store this power for later use. As a result, it either discards or sells the excess power left in hand during the day and buys power at exorbitant rates to meet the evening demand,” he says.
Data from the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) shows how Kerala’s solar power sector has grown. The total solar capacity of the state as on March 31, 2026 was 2215.59 MW. Of this, the share of domestic rooftop units alone (including units under PM-Surya Ghar scheme) was 1850.4 MW. Recently, the Kerala State Electricity Regulatory Commission had found that KSEB was surrendering up to 1000 MW contracted from central generating stations (CGS) and other round-the-clock (RTC) contracts during the day to accommodate solar power inflows from rooftop and other solar generation sources.
The BESS That Didn’t Fly
In 2022, KSEB had proposed to operate a container-sized battery energy storage system (BESS) project in Thiruvananthapuram city. But it did not start then. “Viability gap funding (VGF) was available for this, but the officers’ association at KSEB opposed it, saying it was not viable. On the other hand, the state’s solar potential was not what it is now,” said B., a 1998 batch Kerala cadre IAS officer. recalls Ashok, who was the utility’s chairman and managing director at the time.
“There is a lack of planning in KSEB,” says RVG Menon, former director of the Agency for New and Renewable Energy Research and Technology (ANERT). Prof., a keen observer of the power sector. Menon had installed a rooftop solar unit with battery storage at his home in 2012, when it was a novelty in the state. Today, from an advanced unit, he supplies about 300 units per month to the grid after its use. According to him, the real issue facing the state’s power sector is power generation and its storage.
“KSEB sees solar energy as a nuisance. In their short-sightedness, they only see that there is no shortage of power during the day because the demand is anyway low. On the other hand, they buy power at ₹10 and ₹12 per unit to meet the higher demand in the evening hours. It is an elementary fact that renewable energy is a variable unit and has to be stored. KSEB is yet to implement a single BESS or a pumped storage project (PSP), The two storage options have not been commissioned. KSEB had prepared a report in 2014 which said that there is a PSP capacity of 5075 MW using the existing reservoirs. During the day water is pumped to the upper level to run the turbines.
obstacles in the system
Then there are ‘system constraints’ that affect efficiency. Voltage imbalance, for example, prevents solar power consumers from effectively feeding surplus power into the grid. Users and experts believe that such issues will only increase if they are not addressed intelligently.
R., director of the Center for Energy Management – Kerala, the Energy Department agency that acts as the state’s nodal agency for the Bureau of Energy Efficiency initiative, said. Harikumar points out that despite the rapid growth of the sector, Kerala is still unable to harness the solar potential. He says that without energy storage systems the power sector may have trouble moving forward. “There was an announcement in 2017 that Kerala’s solar capacity would reach 1000 MW in 2022. So the EMC organized a conference in 2018 to discuss the installation of PSPs that can handle the storage required for this day-to-day generation. But we still don’t have one,” he says.
There are studies that peg Kerala’s solar potential at around 30 gigawatts (GW), spread across multiple solar categories such as rooftop and ground-mounted solar and agri-photovoltaics. Kerala has identified 13 locations for PSPs to tap the potential of more than 6 GW PSPs.
only 30% of requirement
But the reality is different. It is not new that the southern state generates only about 30% of its power requirement. The balance is met through an elaborate system of short, medium and long-term power-purchase contracts, supplies from central generating stations (CGS), and ‘banking’ and ‘swap’ arrangements with utilities elsewhere in the country. Meeting summer demand remains an uphill task for state-run power utility KSEB, which handles generation, transmission and distribution in Kerala. This is especially true when summer rainfall decreases, as it did this time.
On several days in the current season, ‘imports’ accounted for more than 80% of the met demand, once again highlighting Kerala’s dependence on costly power purchases and power generation plants located outside its borders. The utility spent ₹12,982.59 crore in 2023-24 and ₹12,749.65 crore in 2024-25 on power purchase.
internal generation
According to Kerala government data, as of March 31, 2025, the state’s installed capacity – including public and private – was 4412.14 MW, of which hydropower’s share was 2284.42 MW, which was 51.8%. The state’s solar energy capacity has gained momentum in recent years, contributing 1519.66 MW (34.4%). The contribution of thermal power and wind was 536.4 MW (12.2%) and 71.53 MW (1.6%) respectively. KSEB’s own internal generation was 2409.8 MW, which included 2196.4 MW hydro, 160 MW thermal, 51.4 MW solar and 2 MW wind power.
The Economic Survey 2025 states that ‘increasing demand for electricity requires increased generation capacity and reliable power supply.’ While formulating the 14th Five Year Plan (2022-27) for Kerala, the State Planning Board had listed ‘resource constraints in promoting renewable energy projects’, ‘lack of transparent policy on power procurement from renewable energy sources’ and ‘delay in commissioning of projects’ as three ‘significant gaps/issues in the energy sector’ during the 13th Plan period. Power sector observers say these issues are still unresolved.
During the recent power crisis, KSEB was slammed by the State Electricity Regulatory Commission for poor summer management. The commission, headed by former bureaucrat TK Jose, found that the emergency situation in the summer months was not a new phenomenon for Kerala. “During the summer months of 2024, the state had gone through a similar situation and the KSEB was expected to have gained adequate experience in dealing with such a situation,” the panel said in a recent order.
Factors increasing power consumption
The state electricity regulator, which plays a key role in the power sector, stressed that LPG shortage in addition to climate change factors and low summer rainfall contributed to the increased consumption in summer 2026. “The factors contributing to the increase in consumption could have been detected earlier and appropriate information, education and communication measures and advocacy could have been put in place to reduce peak-hour consumption,” Mr Jose wrote in the order.
On its part, KSEB had categorically denied any mismanagement or lack of planning for the summer, especially in terms of water management in hydroelectric reservoirs. A senior KSEB official said that KSEB currently has several BESS and PSP projects going on. KSEB’s first large scale BESS is under development at Mylatti in Kasaragod district. The project has a capacity of 125 megawatts (MWh)/500 megawatt hour (MWh), where MWh represents the maximum amount of power it can deliver at a given time, and MWh represents the total amount of energy that the system can store, the official said. “The additional BESS will come up at KSEB substations at Areacode in Malappuram, Srikanthpuram in Alappuzha district, Pothencode in Thiruvananthapuram and Mulleria in Kasaragod. Several PSPs are also in the pipeline,” the KSEB official note said.
Meanwhile, consumer organizations demand more localized solutions. “We need transformer-based energy storage. You cannot expect every solar consumer to buy battery storage, which is not affordable for general consumers unless there is some kind of subsidy support. They have already spent a lot of money on solar units,” explains Jameskutty Thomas.
In terms of energy security, the increasing energy demand will certainly pose formidable challenges for the state and its new government. According to the report ‘Analysis of Feasibility of Energy Storage Systems (ESS) at Sub-National Level’ prepared by EMC – Kerala, Kerala’s peak power demand will soon exceed 7000 MW, mainly due to increase in the use of air conditioners. It said EVs, induction cookstoves and air conditioners will place additional energy demands of 339 MU, 340 MU and 1208 MU respectively on the power system. Creating infrastructure to meet the emerging needs will prove to be a major challenge.
