Hyderabad, March 21: In order to meet the ever increasing power demand in the state, which has been growing at around 10 percent every year, the State government has drawn up a strategy to augment power generation in the state to meet the short-term as well as long-term needs.
The government has evolved a short-term programme to generate 3,300 MW by March 2013-14 with an investment of around Rs 18,000 crore, according to principal secretary for Energy and chairman of AP-Genco Suthirtha Bhattacharya. He revealed this during a teleconference with AP-Genco managing director K Vijayanand, joint managing director D Prabhakar Rao and director (Projects) Radhakrishna.
As per the directions of chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy, the government had also drawn up a long-term strategy to generate 18,503 MW by end of 2017 and transform the state into a power-surplus state in the country.
The chief minister was very keen that the 500 MW Unit-II at the KTPS should be commissioned at the earliest to meet the power demand during the crucial months of April and May.
Bhattacharya requested BHEL chairman B Prasada Rao to provide necessary support for synchronisation of Unit-II at the Stage-VI of the Kothagudem Thermal Power Station (KTPS) by the end of March. It was expected that the unit would generate 20 MW by April, 200 MW by May and the entire 500 MW by June 2011 which would be added to the state grid, he said.
The state government was also focusing on wind power generation which was both economical and environment-friendly, he said.
Bhattacharya said the state government had drawn up an action plan to promote wind power projects in select locations, particularly in the districts of Anantapur, Kurnool, Nellore, Rangareddy, Kadapa, Chittoor and Visakhapatnam which had high potential for wind energy.
As part of the plan, Bhattacharya had written to the district collectors to promote new wind power projects in a time-bound manner besides monitoring the functioning of the existing projects.
He urged the collectors of the above mentioned districts to identify and attract entrepreneurs to set up wind energy plants by availing of the incentives offered by the government.
–Agencies