The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Rains reduce demand for power

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Apr 15, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Rains reduce demand for power

B.S. Satish Kumar

Six units of RTPS resume power generation; unit IV develops snag

Bangalore: There is good news and bad news for consumers on the power front.

Within hours of rectification of a technical fault that tripped all seven generating units of the Raichur Thermal Power Station (RTPS), another technical problem surfaced in its Unit-4 at around 10 p.m. on Friday. The unit with a capacity of 210 MW stopped generation because of a leak in a boiler tube. This unit is expected to resume generation only after a couple of days.

Meanwhile, the recent spell of rains that parts of the State received in the last two days brought down the demand for power.

Sources in Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation Ltd. (KPTCL) told The Hindu that the daily power consumption in the State reduced from around 130 million units (mu) to about 111 mu on Friday. While a part of the reduction was because of loadshedding enforced in the State, rains reduced the consumption by about 8 to 10 mu.

Power used by irrigation pumpsets in areas like Chitradurga district, parts of Bangalore Rural district and Chintamani taluk that decreased in the last two days, according to KPTCL officials. The overall power situation would improve if the State received a good spell of rains at least once a week, they said. At the same time, there was fear of the power consumption by irrigation pumpsets increasing in these areas if there was a prolonged dry spell.

The State was still facing a power shortage of over 500 MW, caused by the stoppage of 210 MW of power supply from a RTPS unit and 250 MW from Sharavathy generation station, Nagjhari Power House and the State's share from the Central Generating Stations at Talcher (Orissa) and Ramagundam.

Supply improves

The KPTCL, which enforced loadshedding in Bangalore and other areas of the State on Thursday, desisted from doing so in Bangalore since Friday evening. Loadshedding was not enforced even on Saturday as the consumption had reduced because of closure of commercial and industrial establishments on account of holiday.

Residents of the BTM Layout and surrounding areas did face power supply interruptions on Saturday because of a snag with respect to a 66-kV power line that links Sarakki and Jayadeva Institute of Cardiology area.

In addition to this, the problem of power supply interruption in some parts of Bangalore because of overloading of the power supply network during peak hours continued.

The problem was expected to be resolved by May end when the ongoing system improvement works would be completed.

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