The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : Discom gearing up to ease power crisis in summer

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Thursday, Oct 29, 2009
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Discom gearing up to ease power crisis in summer

Swathi.V

HYDERABAD: Hopeless power crisis coupled with spiralling loads is in waiting for the twin city residents in the coming summer. With the consumption already hovering between 16-17 million units per day in the core city, officials fear that it might cross 20 MU in summer—something that they cannot cope with unless with substantial improvements in infrastructure.

Creation of a separate Master Plan Zone, an attempt towards consolidating the works within the purview of Metro Zone and the two circles in Ranga Reddy, aims at expediting the construction of substations and the laying of lines in the city and peripheries, say sources from CPDCL.

The Master Plan Zone constitutes the erstwhile Master Plan Circle of the Metro Zone, the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems, apart from a newly constituted Master Plan Cirlce for Ranga Reddy district.

“Over twenty-five 33-KV substations are likely to come up in Metro and Ranga Reddy Zones within a year. A minimum of three substations in each division are proposed in order to be able to meet the loads in the coming five years, calculated at 15 per cent load growth per year. Integration of SCADA with the new zone will help automatic monitoring of all the substations in the two zones,” informed an official. For the purpose of integration, the purview of SCADA has been extended to include Ranga Reddy Zone too.

Upgrading of the servers to suit the new circle is on, and it will be some time before SCADA functions to its extended capacity, he informed.

New substations

Presently, there are 89 substations in the Metro Zone and about 100 in Ranga Reddy Zone. The new 33 KV substations at ESI, Road No. 2, Road No. 12, Durganagar and Panjeshah could be operational within two months while land has been acquired for construction of two more at Begumpet and Tarnaka.

However, much depends on the fortification of high tension network if the summer loads are to be met effectively. There has not been much capacity addition in the city by APTransco in the past five years. After a few critical situations in recent times, transformers in existing substations have been upgraded from 50 MVA to 80 MVA. Proposals are pending for construction of 132-KV substations at Bandlaguda, Moosarambagh, Osmania University and Narayanguda. The substation under construction at Mamidipally will take another year for completion.

“At least five to seven 33-KV substations are coming up each year in the city, but unless matching capacities are developed by APTransco, there will be no respite from the tedious power cuts during summer,” said an official.

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