The Hindu Business Line : AP imposes power cuts to save kharif crops

Urban areas in Andhra Pradesh including towns up to mandal level will be subjected to power cuts from Wednesday to ensure that the standing kharif crops get adequate water supply.

The power cuts will be effective till November when the kharif season ends. Three major cities of Hyderabad, Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada have been exempted from this directive.

With the State faced with demand supply mismatch of about 20 million units, the Government on Wednesday directed the Transmission Corporation of Andhra Pradesh (AP Transco) to regulate supply in urban areas wherever required.

Addressing a press conference here on Wednesday, the State Energy Minister, Mohd Ali Shabbir, and the Chairman and Managing Director of AP Transco, Ms Rachael Chatterjee, said the demand had shot up significantly and the State was drawing over 18 million units a day from Central stations.

The power purchase cost to meet the increased demand from agriculture load is working out to about Rs 8 crore a day.

Demand shoots up

The total demand per day has shot up to 175 million units, which they claimed was the highest ever consumption witnessed in the State.

During April and September 5, the State paid Rs 184 crore for purchase of power.

Buoyed by the widespread rains, farmers have increased acreage and this has resulted in steep hike in energy demand. Alongside this, while the hydel generation has been stepped up through major reservoirs, about 1,500 MW of thermal generation has been lost due to technical problems and outage of a 500-MW Simhadri thermal plant.

The inflows in Srisailam and Nagarjunasagar over the last two months have helped the State to operate these hydel units continuously.

Even though there is shortage, the Minister said the utilities have ensured that there is seven-hour supply for the farm sector operations except during August 29 to September 4 when the grid had to face severe demand supply mismatch.

More Stories on : Power | Cultivation | Andhra Pradesh

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