The Hindu Business Line : APTransco measures to strengthen power system

THE Transmission Corporation of Andhra Pradesh (APTransco) has announced that it has undertaken various special measures to further strengthen and augment the system so as to meet higher demands of power in the near future, particularly in the forthcoming Rabi season.

In a press release here on Sunday, APTransco said the measures include taking up the stringing of second circuit on existing double circuit towers on which one circuit has already been stung at various parts of the State to facilitate larger power flows.

The Power Finance Corporation had already sanctioned the required funding of around Rs 70 crore towards this.

The corporation said massive routine maintenance of the system elements would be taken up at Rs 40 crore and several new 400 kV, 220 kV and 132 kV transmission lines and sub-stations would be erected during the current year.

Apart from replacing old breaker at a cost of Rs 5 crore, APTransco has also decided to take up enhancement of power transformer capacity at existing sub-stations at a cost of Rs 11 crore in addition to erection of transformers at new sub-stations. Further, silicon rubber insulators at a cost of Rs 3 crore would be provided in the place of conventional insulators.

According to the press release, its Chairperson and Managing Director, Ms Rachel Chatterjee, has disclosed these details in a communication to the CMDs of distribution companies (DisComs) and field officers.

She informed the officials that the State Government was reviewing the performance of the whole power system on a monthly basis and a Committee of Directors on a regular basis.

The State Load Despatch Centre is taking care of the perfect balance of generation to load through online grid management to ensure safety and security of the power system giving no scope for any contingency such as brownouts and blackouts that might lead to massive disruption of power supply, she said.

Currently, the installed capacity of generation available for APTransco stands at 10,990 MW comprising of 2,992 MW of thermal power, 3,586 MW of hydel power, 272 MW in joint sector ventures, 1,000 MW of gas power, allocation from central projects of 2,465 MW and balance 675 MW from small power plants. However, in practice, the availability from the thermal plants would be 80 per cent at 2,394 MW, 30 per cent from hydel keeping in view the reservoir levels and irrigation requirements at 1,080 MW, non-availability of gas-to-gas power stations reducing the generation from these stations to 700 MW and the outage of generators on average would be 500 MW owing to various problems, the APTransco release said.

According to the corporation, there has been a spurt in demand from the last week of August till early September due to incidence of loads of unauthorised connections and sustained agriculture loads. The corporation is of the view that administrative solutions were required to contain the spurt in demand attributable to unauthorised agricultural connections to save the grid from collapse.

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