AP seeks 400 Mw more from Centre

The Andhra Pradesh government is gearing up to meet the state's demand for power by seeking from the Centre 300 Mw-400 Mw from the unallocated pool in addition to 115 Mw from Caiga Atomic Power Station and 100 Mw from West Bengal, being accessed from today.

The power supply position in the state has deteriorated in recent weeks with close to 1,000 Mw of installed capacity getting off the hook on account of both planned and unplanned outages resulting into a full blown political issue with the opposition parties planning to hold massive farmers' protests commencing tomorrow.

While the base availability of power generation is currently hovering around 5,100 Mw, the state power utilities are struggling to meet the peak load of up to 7,000 Mw by resorting to various measures including peaking generation of close to 900 Mw of hydro electricity, overdrawal of power from the regional grid etc.

The state is currently drawing 36 million units (mu) a day from the central sector in addition to about 23 mu from the NTPC's Simahadri Power project, which exclusively supplies power to Andhra.

Keeping with the trend of increased consumption levels mostly from agriculture and domestic sectors, the state grid handled a day's consumption of about 150 mu on Tuesday, compared with 137 mu on the corresponding day last year.

Chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy today said the government had drawn up plans to purchase additionally about 2,000 mu of power costing about Rs 689 crore during the December-March period to meet the additional demand mostly arising out of agriculture operations.

All other alternatives including the possible generation of power using the naptha fuel are being considered as the peak demand is expected to go up as high as 190 mu by March 2007.

He admitted that the agriculture consumptionhad gone up by almost 20 per cent with the increased acreage of 26 lakh hectares under well irrigation during the current rabi season.