In the summer of 2024, when it seemed that electricity consumption was beginning to get out of hand, the Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB) wanted people to avoid charging their e-vehicles in the evening hours. The power utility had a reason for it. Consumption levels generally spike after 6 p.m., notably in summer when air-conditioners are the go-to weapon against the heat. But the sharp rise in e-vehicle numbers had opened a new battlefront for the KSEB that year. Car batteries, still in the evolving stage, took a long time to charge, driving up power demand. By May the next year, guidelines were in place to promote EV charging during daylight hours with lower tariffs as the proverbial carrot.

Cut to 2026 summer. A new ‘villain’ was added to the script. Electric cooktops first drew headlines when the West Asia crisis spawned an unprecedented LPG shortage in Kerala. As March ended and April rolled in, dragging a power crisis with it, electric cooking appliances too were added to the narrative of reasons for the surge in electricity consumption. Air-conditioners, no longer an extravagance in Kerala’s muggy weather, remain the chief culprits along with EV charging and the use of energy-guzzling electrical appliances in the evening hours.

The threat of power cuts

With the seasonal summer rainfall still in the deficit bracket, the electricity demand after 6 p.m. crossed 6000 megawatts (MW) for the first time in Kerala during the 2026 summer. On April 18, it touched a record 6033 MW. Daily electricity consumption rose to an unprecedented 118.26 million units (mu) on April 26, raising the spectre of officially sanctioned load shedding and power cuts, something to which Kerala has been immune in recent years. A high-level meeting of the Power Department and the Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB) on April 28 eventually decided to impose below-30-minute ‘load restrictions’ between 6 p.m. and midnight in unavoidable circumstances for preserving the stability of the electricity grid.

Fortunately for the KSEB and the public, the curbs did not last long as summer rainfall strengthened over the State, taking consumption down. In reality, e-cooking was only the latest addition to a growing list as Kerala’s dependence on electricity increases by the year.

Reasons for crisis

All this has served to lay bare one thing this summer season: the inability or, as the more sterner critics of the KSEB allege, reluctance of the power system to adapt to the growth of renewables. Experts and the ‘prosumer’ category — consumers who are also electricity producers — feel that the KSEB is skirting the real imperative; the need for a system that is supportive of changes in the sector. Effective integration of renewables, especially daytime-generated solar power pumped into the grid by prosumers, continues to pose problems for the KSEB, largely on account of inadequacies in the power system.

“No one can halt the growth of solar power. It is a reality,” says Jameskutty Thomas, a prosumer who represents the Kerala Domestic Solar Prosumers Community. He estimates that solar units in the State generate approximately 6 to 8 million units (mu) daily. “But the problem is, the KSEB does not have systems to store this power for later use. Consequently, it either surrenders or sells surplus power in hand during daytime and buys electricity at exorbitant rates to meet the evening demand,” he says.

Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) data show how Kerala’s solar power sector has grown. The State’s total solar capacity stood at 2215.59 MW on March 31, 2026. Of this, domestic rooftop units (including units under PM-Surya Ghar Yojana) alone accounted for 1850.4 MW. Recently, the Kerala State Electricity Regulatory Commission had found that the KSEB has been surrendering up to 1000 MW contracted from the central generating stations (CGS) and other round-the-clock (RTC) contracts during the daytime to accommodate solar power inflow from rooftop and other solar generation sources.

The BESS that did not take off

In 2022, the KSEB had proposed piloting a container-sized battery energy storage system (BESS) project in Thiruvananthapuram city. But it did not take off then. “Viability gap funding (VGF) was available for it, but the officers’ association in the KSEB opposed it saying it was not viable. On the other hand, the solar capacity of the State was not as much as it is now,” recalls B. Ashok, a 1998 batch Kerala cadre IAS officer who was chairman and managing director of the utility at the time.

“What is lacking in the KSEB is planning,” says R.V.G. Menon, former director of the Agency for New and Renewable Energy Research and Technology (ANERT). A keen observer of the power sector, Prof. 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 upgraded unit, he supplies around 300 units a month to the grid after his use. The real issue facing the State’s power sector, according to him, is power generation and its storage.

“The KSEB views solar power as a nuisance. In their short-sightedness, they see only that there is no power shortage during daytime as the demand is anyway less. On the other hand, they buy power at ₹10 and ₹12 per unit to meet the high demand in the evening hours. It is an elementary fact that renewable energy is a variable entity and it has to be stored. The KSEB is yet to commission a single BESS or a pumped storage project (PSP), the two storage options for renewable energy. The KSEB had drawn up a report in 2014 saying Kerala had the potential for PSPs worth 5075 MW using existing reservoirs,” he says. (PSPs are systems with an upper and a lower reservoir. Water is pumped to the upper level during daytime using cheaper renewable energy. The stored water is released down to work the turbines during periods of higher power demand.)

Constraints in system

Then there are the ‘system constraints’ that hobble efficiency. Voltage imbalances, for instance, prevent solar prosumers from effectively injecting surplus power into the grid. Users and experts feel that such issues would get aggravated unless they are addressed wisely.

R. Harikumar, Director of Energy Management Centre - Kerala, the Power Department agency that acts as the State nodal agency for Bureau of Energy Efficiency initiatives, points out that Kerala is still unable to tap the solar potential, despite the rapid growth of the sector. He says the power sector could find it troublesome moving ahead without energy storage systems. “There was an announcement in 2017 that Kerala’s solar capacity would touch 1000 MW in 2022. So the EMC organised a conference in 2018 to discuss the establishment of PSPs that could handle the storage needed for this daytime generation. But we still don’t have one,” he says.

There are studies that peg Kerala’s solar potential at approximately 30 gigawatts (GW), spread across multiple solar categories such as rooftop and ground-mounted solar and agri-photovoltaics. Kerala has also identified 13 locations for PSPs to harness a potential of more than 6 GW of PSP.

Just 30% of requirement

But the reality is somewhat different. It is no news that the southern State produces only about 30% of its electricity requirement. The rest is met through an elaborate system of short, medium and long term power-purchase contracts, supplies from the central generating stations (CGS), and ‘banking’ and ‘swap’ arrangements with utilities elsewhere in the country. Meeting the summer demand remains a tight-rope walk for the KSEB, the State-run power company which handles generation, transmission and distribution within Kerala. This is especially true when summer rainfall goes AWOL, like it did this time.

On many days in the current season, ‘imports’ accounted for over 80% of the demand met, revealing, yet again, the extent of Kerala’s reliance on costly power purchases and power generation plants situated outside its boundaries. The utility spent ₹12,982.59 crore in 2023-24 and ₹12,749.65 crore in 2024-25 on power purchases.

Internal generation

According to Kerala government figures, as on March 31, 2025, the State’s installed capacity — public and private included — stood at 4412.14 MW, of which hydropower accounted for 2284.42 MW, 51.8%. The State’s solar power capability, having gained momentum in recent years, contributed 1519.66 MW (34.4%). Thermal power and wind accounted for 536.4 MW (12.2%) and 71.53 MW (1.6%) respectively. The KSEB’s own internal generation stood at 2409.8 MW, including 2196.4 MW of hydel, 160 MW of thermal, 51.4 MW of solar and 2 MW of wind power.

The Economic Review 2025 has noted that ‘Growing electricity demand requires increased generation capacity and reliable power supply.’ When drawing up the 14th Five Year Plan for Kerala (2022-27), 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 ‘Critical gaps/issues in the energy sector’ during the 13th Plan period. Power sector observers say these issues remain unaddressed.

During the recent power crisis, the KSEB was roundly scolded by the State Electricity Regulatory Commission for slipshod summer management. The Commission headed by T.K. Jose, a former bureaucrat, observed that contingency situations in the summer months were not a new phenomenon for Kerala. “During the 2024 summer months, the State had gone through a similar situation and KSEB was expected to gain sufficient experience in handling such a situation,” the panel observed in a recent order.

Factors raising power consumption

The State power regulator, which plays an important role in the power sector, asserted that the LPG shortage contributed to the enhanced consumption in 2026 summer apart from climate change factors and the sparse summer showers. “Factors contributing to the hike in consumption could have been detected well in advance and appropriate information, education and communication measures and advocacies for reducing the peak-hour consumption could have been taken,” Mr. Jose wrote in the order.

On its part, the KSEB had categorically denied any mismanagement or lack of planning for the summer, particularly in the matter of water management in the hydel reservoirs. A senior KSEB official said that the KSEB has several BESS and PSP projects under way at the moment. The KSEB’s first large-scale BESS is under development at Mylatti in Kasaragod district. This project has a capacity of 125 megawatts (MW)/500 Megawatt Hour (MWh) where MW denotes the maximum amount of power that it can deliver at a given moment, and MWh, the total amount of energy that the system can store, the official said. “Additional BESS will come up at KSEB substations at Areacode in Malappuram, Sreekantapuram in Alappuzha district, Pothencode in Thiruvananthapuram and Mulleria in Kasaragod. Several PSPs are also in the pipeline,” the KSEB official notes.

Prosumer organisations, meanwhile, call for more localised solutions. “What we need is transformer-based energy storage. You also cannot expect every solar prosumer to buy battery storage, which is unaffordable for ordinary prosumers unless there is some kind of subsidy support. They’ve already spent a lot of money on the solar units,” points out Jameskutty Thomas.

In terms of energy security, the soaring energy demand is sure to pose formidable challenges for the State and its new government. Kerala’s peak electricity demand will soon exceed 7000 MW, driven largely by a surge in air-conditioner use, according to the report ‘Analysing Viability of Energy Storage Systems (ESS) at the Sub-national level,’ prepared by EMC - Kerala. It says that EVs, induction cookstoves and air-conditioners would place an additional energy demand of, respectively, 339 mu, 340 mu and 1208 mu on the power system. Having the infrastructure in place to accommodate emerging needs would prove to be a big challenge.