Industry ready to pay more for power in AP

The Federation of Andhra Pradesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Fapcci) today informed chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy that its members were willing to pay extra charges for uninterrupted power. The industry was suffering huge production losses on account of power cuts, it said.

A delegation led by Fapcci president VS Raju met the chief minister and said industry had been being subjected to over 40-50 per cent cut in power supply each week in the last three months as against the overall deficit of 10-15 per cent in meeting the grid demand.

According to Raju, manufacturing in the state is losing Rs 150 crore daily on account of production loss, which in turn, was affecting the jobs in this sector.

He said they were willing to purchase expensive power as proposed by the state power utilities to overcome the present problem.

The discoms had recently approached the state electricity regulator (APERC) seeking its approval to supply expensive power to industry and commercial consumers by buying power from outside that normally comes at a premium. It is said that the expensive power would cost upwards of Rs 7 per unit as against Rs 3-4 per unit.

The power situation has been deteriorated in AP with significant increase in demand on the one hand and dip in availability due to outages and decline in generation from gas-fired plants on the other, according to the government.

On Monday, the power utilities supplied 216 million units (mu) across all categories of consumers in the state as against the actual demand of 242 mu, a deficit of around 26 per cent.

This was still higher compared with 192 mu supplied on the corresponding day last year, a Transco release said.

Energy officials said the increase in demand was primarily caused by the dry spells witnessed during the past three months. Stoppage of generation in two units having a total capacity of 1,000 Mw and decline in supply from central generating stations further aggravated the demand-supply situation.