Keeping in view of the projected unprecedented demand for power, APTRANSCO suggested the DISCOMs to fully gear up to face the challenges of rising demand in coming 3 months due to ongoing Rabi season, for ensuring that not even a single acre crop wither due to short supply of power apart from providing proper power supply in view of annual examinations to the students and scorching summer.
Hiralal Samariya CMD/APTRANSCO, while reviewing the power supply position in a high level meet with JMDs of APTRANSCO, Ramesh, P. Umapathi, CMDs of DISCOMs Ahmed Nadeem, V. Anil Kumar, Kartikeya Misra, V.S. Reddy, directors of APTRANSCO at Vidyut Soudha, suggested the DISCOM officials to take all possible steps to replace failed Distribution Transformers (DTRs) within stipulated time i.e. 24 hours in urban areas and 48 hours in rural areas without causing any inconvenience to the consumers.
He stressed the need to replace failed DTRs within the stipulated time and not to put single rupee burden on farming community for transportation of DTRs. Field officials should maintain sufficient rolling stock (4%) for timely replacement of failed DTRs and conduct the substation level meetings duly involving the farmers and local public representatives for getting feedback on power supply position during the Rabi season. Even after taking all possible steps such as running the power plants at optimum level, maintaining adequate coal stocks, procurement of additional power from outside, utilities are going to face huge demand supply gap in the coming 3 months a press release from Transco said.
AP Transco CMD said DISCOMs should strive hard with special focus on agriculture sector as Govt. is keen on extending 7 hours power supply to the agriculture sector and officials should take all possible steps to compensate any short fall in seven hours power supply during next day, he added. In view of the estimated increasing demand for power, the CMD directed top officials of power sector to arrange to process the applications of open access consumers within 24 hours without fail to meet the power demand to some extent.
He appreciated the concerted efforts of the DISCOMs for speedy implementation of Restructured Accelerated Power Development and Reforms Programme (R-APDRP) by making use of latest IT initiatives such as Geographical Information System (GIS) based customer indexing and asset mapping, setting up of Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) and effective Distribution Management Systems (DMS), etc for improving the customer services. With the completion of IT initiatives under R-APDRP in all the major towns in the state, utilities will be in a position to further extend best services through online by strengthening customer care centers, toll-free consumer grievance systems.(NSS)