Hyderabad, October 05: To tide over the energy crisis, the state government is chanting the austerity mantra appealing to the general public to save power as there is a resource crunch added to the ongoing Sakala Janula Samme, the four hour power cut notwithstanding.
Households and commercial establishments are still coming to grips with the power cuts in the festival season and are virtually powerless on so many counts and there comes the teaser from the Energy Department asking the public to save power by switching from air conditioners to fans, from other high voltage gadgets to smaller elements as the Department was doing its best to handle the situation.
Use stairs instead of the lift was not mentioned by the department, thankfully and as the strike going into the second fortnight, Government must by now, by all means, learn the process of proper distribution of power.
The reasons given by the Department for constraints in supply of power to all categories of consumers is due to shortage of coal supplies to Thermal Power Plants following strike at Singareni Collieries since September 13 besides transportation problems, reduction of inflows into reservoirs and limitation in gas supplies. The Government has given the nod for purchase of additional power of 980 MW to meet the demand in October, 2011, 330 MW from RLNG and 550 MW from other sources.
It went on a spree of PPA (Power Purchase Agreements) some years earlier and the babu log should by now explore the possibility of buying power from other sources as well. Some of the big business houses have captive power generation facilities and some of them have excess power as well which can be explored and negotiate for a comfortable price, given the situation.
The government went on the give the finer details of the loss it is incurring due the strike and the drop in production and the loss there on and pegged the figure at Rs 600 crore as additional spending for buying power to meet the demand.
Due to strike, the daily production of coal from Singareni Collieries has come down to 36,700 tonnes per day from 1.5 lakh tonnes per day, totalling loss of 17.2 Lakhs tonnes for the past 20 days. The State is spending around 600 crores towards additional purchase to meet the demand. It went on to give the drop in Hydel and the gap between the demand and supply of power. In spite of all this the State boasts, power has been supplied to to agriculture sector to save kariff crop.
“Keeping the above factors in view, the Energy Department humbly request the consumers to co-operate with the power utilities to overcome the present situation. All the consumers are requested to save energy and adopt power saving measures,” the department said.
——Agencies