HYDERABAD: Many farmers in the State have installed agriculture pumpsets of higher capacity to take advantage of the free power supply scheme and extract squeeze as much groundwater as possible.

The normal capacity allowed for free supply is 5 HP and, according to power experts, this is quite sufficient to provide a good quantum of water to the crop.

However, farmers have resorted to increase in capacity up to 20 HP at a number of places with the conventional belief that more water fetches more yield. This is more so with paddy, a study by Andhra Pradesh Transco has indicated. This has almost doubled the agriculture load abruptly on the grid and is one of the four causes of power shortage.

Transco engineers are unable to initiate action against the farmers as the issue is politically sensitive. On the other hand, the Chief Minister's advice to farmers to install capacitors to save energy has not been followed even to the extent of 15 per cent.

Tripping of the grid appeared imminent on Tuesday morning when the line frequency dipped to 45.9 cycles per second as against the safe level of 49.5 due to heavy drawal from the farm sector.

Simhadri to rescue

The demand from the domestic and other sectors which also has gone up as day temperatures rose, added to the strain on the grid.

The tripping would have caused a total blackout in all the southern States, as all of them are connected to the Southern Regional Grid. However, alert Transco officials averted it by resorting to cuts wherever possible. The NTPC's Simhadri plant at Visakhapatnam also saved the situation by operating without interruption almost at its full capacity of 1,000 MW.

Another reason is the Government's reluctance to release more water for power generation from Srisailam and Nagarjunasagar in order to maintain a minimum storage of 854 ft and 510 ft respectively. Outage of some thermal stations and the reluctance of other states to help Andhra Pradesh are also contributing to a demand-supply gap of around 800 MW.

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