The Hindu : Kerala / Thiruvananthapuram News : Consumers come to the rescue of KSEB

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Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram

Consumers come to the rescue of KSEB

P. Venugopal

‘Switch off one light, help KSEB avoid a power cut’ campaign pays off

Campaign launched on February 20
KSEB finds fall in peak hour consumption

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Some 70 lakh domestic power consumers in the State — at least a good number of them — have come to the help of the Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB) in a big way this summer to overcome a crisis in peak time availability of electricity.

Kerala too would have been forced to go for a load-shedding and even a power cut by now this summer like some of the other southern States but for the manner in which the power consumers are responding to a campaign to cut down their use of electricity.

The KSEB launched the campaign on February 20 seeing the crisis looming large. Projections done that month had convinced the KSEB that it would have to announce a load shedding or even a power cut with the advent of the summer season, when power consumption usually shoots up as fans and air-conditioners work overtime.

The State’s share of unallocated power from the Central pool too had come down because of the demand for more electricity in other southern States, where the situation is worse than that in Kerala.

“Switch off one light, help KSEB avoid a power cut,” was the message of the campaign. The calculation was that, if 70 lakh domestic consumers were to consciously switch off one 60-watt bulb each, the peak load demand in the State would come down by 420 MW. One-and-a-half months into the campaign using various Malayalam television channels, the KSEB finds that the peak load consumption in the State is between 100 MW and 150 MW lower than what it would have been had not the consumers responded so enthusiastically to its plea for help.

“It has been a wonderful experience so far. We are organising a programme in Kochi on tomorrow to felicitate film director Joshy, who shot the video footage featuring film stars Mohanlal, Suresh Gopi and Dileep for the campaign. Of course, we owe our thanks to the power consumers first,” a top KSEB official told The Hindu on Wednesday.

Power consumption has been growing by more than five per cent each year in recent times. The KSEB gave five lakh new power connections last year. Still the highest demand experienced so far this year reached only 2,745 MW (on March 31), as against a high of 2,742 MW touched last year.

“The rains this summer too have helped reduce power consumption. But, even on very hot days the power consumers are helping the KSEB,” the official said.

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