The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : Plan to provide coal security to power plants

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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Plan to provide coal security to power plants

Special Correspondent

Prime Minister assigning top priority to coal security: Union Minister of State for Power

— PHOTO: NAGARA GOPAL

POWER TALK:Union Minister of State for Power K. C. Venugopal, Principal Secretary (Energy ) L. V. Subramanyam, and APTransco MD Ajay Jain at the review meeting in Hyderabad on Wednesday.

HYDERABAD: The Centre will shortly finalise an action plan to provide coal security to the existing power stations in the country that have linkage agreements with suppliers, in the light of the ongoing fuel shortage.

Union Minister of State for Power K. C. Venugopal told reporters here on Wednesday that a fruitful decision was expected from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who had held two meetings with officials on coal security.

The plan would include the modalities for coal imports. The Prime Minister was assigning top priority to coal security.

Mr. Venugopal earlier reviewed the progress of the two centrally-sponsored flagship programmes -- Rajiv Gandhi Grameena Vidyuth Yojana (RGGVY) and Restructured Accelerated Power Development and Reforms Programme (R-APDRP) -- in Andhra Pradesh. He said the State stood first in RGGVY by putting up an excellent performance but lagged in R-APDRP.

Electrification

He said all the listed 13,556 habitations and 31.5 lakh rural households in the State, which remained without electricity supply for long, had been electrified under RGGVY by spending Rs. 825 crore.

However, targets were yet to be achieved under the Rs. 232-crore R-APDRP launched last year to use information technology to improve consumers' satisfaction in 113 towns.

He said Rs. 1,056 crore had been sanctioned to reduce distribution losses in 42 out of the 113 towns by constructing sub-stations and erecting transformers wherever required.

SCADA

Ajay Jain, CMD of APTransco, said the Minister gave his nod to implement SCADA, a system by which power supply could be switched on/off to a place by remote control, in Hyderabad, Visakhapatnam, Warangal, Tirupati, Vijayawada, and Guntur, involving an expenditure of Rs. 200 crore and provide Rs. 46 crore to electrify tribal habitations, some of them by solar energy.

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