How much breathing room does your power supply actually have?

This September was supposed to give India's power grid a break. Instead, on some nights, the gap between the electricity people wanted and what the grid could supply reached almost 8 gigawatts, bigger than anything seen during this year's heatwaves. Kerala restricted power in the evenings. Near Patna, villagers blocked a highway after three days without electricity. And 82 power plants were running critically low on coal, with barely a week's worth left.Strangely, India isn't short of coal. About 76 million tonnes sits at Coal India's mines. But a weak monsoon drained the dams and flooded the coal belt at the same time.So how much breathing room is there between you and a power cut? This episode was edited by Arnav Prakash.Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.