Hyderabad, April 07: Chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy has directed AP-Transco and AP discoms to give top priority to providing seven hours of power supply to agriculture in view of the peak rabi season.
He directed the officials that standing crops should be protected at any cost by ensuring seven hours of quality power supply and if necessary by giving additional hours of supply wherever required and asked them to update the feeder-wise information on agriculture supply on their websites regularly.
The chief minister also wanted domestic power supply without any interruptions.
Reviewing the power supply position at a high level meeting on Wednesday at the camp office, officials informed Kiran Kumar Reddy that discoms are currently supplying around 253 MU per day and meeting the peak demand of 11,384 MW. The average energy supplied per day during March was 255.5 MU as against 231 MU during the same period last year, registering an increase of 10.5 percent.
The peak demand met during March was 11,829 MW as against 10,880 MW during March last year registering an increase of 8.72 percent. Feeder- wise information has already been put on website www.aptransco.gov.in as per the directions.
The chief minister directed the officials to ensure that not even a single acre of standing crop is damaged due to shortage of power supply. He also asked officials to conduct meetings atleast at one substation in a mandal so that the consumers of other areas also will be able to present their problems if any.
Officials said that around 1.2 lakh new agriculture connections have been released this year, the highest during last 10 years and that AP-Transco has commissioned 24 EHT substations this year. Under the 100- days action plan for Infrastructure development in Hyderabad, around 90 percent of the works have been completed by AP-Transco and APCPDCL and an amount of `170 crores has been spent for infrastructure development in the twin cities.
Officials said that APGENCO hydel units are available for generation from Srisailam complex, Nagarjunsagar and Sileru complex with the existing water levels in respective reservoirs as per the grid requirements.
Rayalaseema Unit-5 (210 MW) is back to service after rectification of damaged cables and control panels in fire accident on March 21.
The present installed capacity of APGENCO is 8384.9 MW comprising 4592.5 MW thermal, 3790.4 MW hydel and 2 MW of wind power. All thermal units are now operational and supplying around 28 MU per day.
Chief secretary SV Prasad, special chief secretary to CM G Satyanarayana, principal secretary (Energy) Suthirtha Bhattacharya, CMD of AP-Transco Ajay Jain, MD of APGENCO K Vijayanand, CMD of APCPDCL MT Krishna Babu and other officials attended the meeting.
–Agencies