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The State Government has approved a proposal for declaring a one-hour load shedding to be scheduled half-an-hour each during day and night.
Public utility Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB) had submitted a proposal, which was given the go-head by a meeting of the State Cabinet here on Wednesday.
STORAGE LEVEL
This follows the precarious storage situation obtaining with the southwest monsoon playing truant, leaving the reservoirs in the State in varying degrees of deficit.
Announcing the Cabinet decision to newspersons, Chief Minister Oommen Chandy said the Government was left with hardly any other option.
The KSEB has also recommended a power cut to the extent of 25 per cent for high tension and extra high tension consumers.
It has sought a cap of 200 units a month in terms of consumption for domestic connections, above which the latter would be required to pay at higher tariff.
REGULATOR SOUNDED
KSEB has in turn submitted the recommendations to the regulator, Kerala State Electricity Regulatory Commission (KSERC).
Meanwhile, unscheduled load shedding came into force in the rural areas from Monday night. According to sources, this was resorted to in view of enhanced consumption levels triggering fears of a power grid collapse.
G.K. Nair adds from Kochi: Generation of power from the hydel projects of late is at around 10.5 million units (mus) a day against the daily requirement of 55 mus. The balance is met by supplies from Central grid, which supplies around 20 mus.
From the open market 10 mus are purchased while 7.8 mus are brought from the NTPC's Kayamkulam thermal plant at Rs 12.18 a unit.
From the open market, under long-term contract, power is being purchased at Rs 4-5 a unit. But, currently the price has been increased to Rs 7.5 a unit, a senior KSEB official said.
To meet the peak hour demand Board's diesel power generating units are also operated, he said.
“The only hope now is the northeast monsoon and nothing could be predicted about it at present. If we receive comparatively good rains in the coming months, power shedding could be withdrawn for some time,” he added.
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