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Tuesday, Aug 05, 2008
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Curbs on power supply to continue

Special Correspondent

Last week’s good rainfall has done little to ease the crisis in the power sector

KSEB reviews monsoon’s progress in the State
Storage is only 37% of reservoirs’ capacity

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Good rainfall last week in the catchment areas of major reservoirs has done little to change the crisis situation in the power sector in the State, according to the Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB).

The KSEB called a board meeting here on Monday to review the monsoon’s progress and found that there was still no case for withdrawing the existing power supply restrictions in the State.

The 30-minute load shedding and the 25 per cent supply restriction for High Tension and Extra High Tension consumers would continue, the KSEB said in a press release.

KSEB finances

The storage of water in the reservoirs as on Monday morning was worth only 1,551 million units, only 50 per cent of what it was on the corresponding day last year. The storage now is 37 per cent of the capacity of the reservoirs, while it was close to 70 per cent in the first week of August last.

The KSEB said its finances were stretched by the daily additional expense involved in purchasing costly power from stations running on naphtha and diesel. It incurred loss of Rs.192 crore in July. A sum of Rs.387 crore was spent solely on energy purchase during the month.

Energy consumption

Load-shedding had enabled saving of only 8 lakh units of power a day. The board found that the domestic consumers were yet to respond to the institution’s plea for more care in energy consumption.

Judging from the performance of the monsoon so far this season, the KSEB expected hydro power generation to come down by 2,332.8 million units this year. Shortfall in Central allocation of power would come to 817.7 million units. The total shortfall in budgeted energy would thus come to 3,150.5 million units.

The crisis would ease only if something extraordinary happens during the remaining phase of the rains and the domestic consumers cooperate whole-heartedly in reducing energy consumption.

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