Enhancing water-use efficiency of thermal power plants in India: need for mandatory water audits

This policy brief discusses the challenges of water availability and opportunity to improve the water use efficiency in industries specially the thermal power plants. It presents TERI’s experience from comprehensive water audits conducted for thermal power plants in India. The findings indicate that there is a significant scope for saving water in the waste water discharge, cooling towers, ash handling systems, and the township water supply. Interventions like recycling wastewater, curbing leakages, increasing CoC (Cycles of concentration) in cooling towers, using dry ash handling etc., can significantly reduce the specific water consumption in power plants. However, the first step towards this is undertaking regular water audits. The policy brief highlights the need of mandatory water audits necessary to understand the current water use and losses as well as identify opportunities for water conservation, reduction in specific water consumption, and an overall improvement in water use efficiency in industries.