The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : Power demand shoots up

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Friday, Jun 20, 2008
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Power demand shoots up

Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD: Power supply situation turned grim in the State on Wednesday with the daily demand shooting up to 173 million units and with no state or trader offering additional power for sale.

The demand has gone up by about 20 per cent in the State instead of falling due to onset of monsoon. This is attributed to general increase in power consumption in the domestic sector rather than to agriculture load. The demand the same day last year was 154 mu.

As a result of the wide demand-supply gap, the line frequency precariously hovered around 48 cycles a second on Thursday as against the normal level of 49.5 cycles, threatening to trip power generation stations. The Southern Load Despatch Centre, Bangalore, through which the Central Electricity Authority monitors the situation in the South, was forced to warn AP Transco against any more withdrawal from the southern grid.

Despite best efforts to buy power from external sources, the sale has been offered only by three companies—Adani (Gujarat), Tata (Maharashtra) and Jindal (Karnataka) and that too to the tune of 6 mu a day. As the price quoted by them is high, the Transco is shelling out over Rs. 7 crore a day even for 6 mu. Over Rs 140 crore has been spent on the purchases this month so far.

Several drawbacks pushed the State into the present predicament. A monsoon lull led to a dry spell in the State. Srisailam hydel complex which, with an installed capacity of 1,670 MW, generated 60 mu daily around this time last year, has been closed to facilitate repairs to apron of the dam.

The price of naphtha has gone up to Rs. 68,000 per tonne, forcing the Transco to stop operation of Lanco. Instead, Lanco is run on gas. Consequently, the operation of Vemagiri, to which the gas meant for Lanco was diverted till recently, came to a halt. Further, the existing gas-based projects are operated at half their capacity while three completed projects are kept idle due to gas shortage.

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Andhra Pradesh