The Hindu Business Line : AP facing power shortage

The State is faced with demand supply mismatch of over 10 million units per day and is now forced to clamp an unscheduled power cut of about four hours in all towns and villages.

This situation arose with significant demand surge due to power requirement during the ongoing rabi season and fall in generation from some of the thermal units and shortage of gas supply for gas based plants in the State.

Of the total installed capacity of about 11,186 MW, about 6,000 MW is now available as several units have been facing outages and gas plants not generating to the optimum capacity due to inadequate power supply.

This has caused considerable unrest among the farm sector as a significant number of farmers are dependent on the power supply for managing their borewells.

Farmers have been agitating and creating pressure on the Government to ensure about seven hour supply to save their crop.

The State Home Minister, Mr. K. Jana Reddy, today said that elaborate arrangements have been made to protect electricity installations and sub-stations from agitating farmers and appealed to political parties to explain the situation to the farmers and other users and not to instigate them to agitate.

CM directive

The Chief Minister, Dr.Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, held parleys with the Chief Secretary, Mr. J. Harinarayan, and directed that the power supply be closely monitored.

Some of the political parties have called for `rasta roko' on December 28 to protest against what they described as a grave power situation.

As per estimates, as against total requirement of about 160 million units now, about 150 million units are being supplied through additional power purchase from Central generating stations. About 35 per cent of the total power output is being consumed for farm sector operation.

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