India is facing one of its most intense heatwave episodes in recent memory, with electricity demand breaking all-time records, power cuts spreading across major cities, and hundreds of dead fish washing up in a New Delhi lake as temperatures approach 45 degrees Celsius in the capital.
The India Meteorological Department has forecast "heatwave to severe heatwave conditions" for New Delhi and large parts of northern and eastern India from Friday through to 27 May. India officially classifies a heatwave when temperatures exceed 40 degrees Celsius in the plains. The extreme heat has been driven in part by an El Niño weather pattern bringing above-average temperatures across the subcontinent this May. Affected states include Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, which border the capital, as well as the eastern coastal state of Odisha.
Surging demand driven by the heat pushed India's peak electricity consumption beyond 270 gigawatts — a national record — exposing chronic vulnerabilities in the country's power grid. Residents in Chennai, a major manufacturing and technology hub in southern India, reported nighttime outages lasting between 40 minutes and an hour. Similar complaints emerged from New Delhi, the neighbouring city of Noida, and parts of Odisha, where cuts extended through both day and night. India's national grid regulator, Grid-India, recorded a peak power deficit of around 2.57 gigawatts on Thursday evening, when supply relies heavily on thermal and hydropower sources rather than daytime solar generation. The power ministry urged consumers to use electricity "wisely and judiciously," while energy experts called on the government to fast-track battery storage infrastructure to make surplus solar energy available at night.
The crisis also took a visible environmental toll in the capital. Hundreds of dead fish were removed from Sanjay Lake in New Delhi on Friday by workers and local residents. Authorities have not confirmed an official cause, but scientists widely link such mass die-offs to falling oxygen levels in water that becomes too warm to sustain aquatic life.
Why this matters: the episode is a stark illustration of how extreme heat cascades across systems simultaneously — straining power grids, disrupting livelihoods, and damaging ecosystems. Climate researchers warn that South Asia's heatwaves are becoming longer and more intense as global temperatures rise. Across Indian cities, authorities have already adapted in recent years by closing schools early, shifting outdoor labour to nighttime hours, and opening emergency cooling shelters — measures that may increasingly become routine features of the subcontinent's summers.