The power starved state of Punjab may witness a complete turnaround if the projections of Deputy Chief Minister of the state Sukhbir Singh Badal come ture.
In a conference organised by CII (NR) on ‘Power Reforms for the North-Target 24X7 Electricity for All’ on Friday, he asserted that Punjab would be a power surplus state by the end of year 2013.
"We might be exporting power to the other states like we export wheat and paddy. If the international trade barriers are opened we may also export power to Pakistan", said Badal.
The state of Punjab has been in the eye of storm due to high power tariff and insufficient and erratic power supply.
The state lost quite a few fresh investment proposals due to bottlenecks like power shortage and high cost of land.
Badal said that land cost cannot be regulated as it is pure demand and supply equation but the availability of power can be improved to attract industry.
"Our 1200 MW (Mega Watt) L&T Thermal power Project in Rajpura would be operational next year. We would upgrade it to 2000 MW soon. In addition, two more thermal power projects viz, 2000 MW project with Sterlite Energy Limited in Talwandi Sabo and 1350 MW project with Indiabulls Power near Mansa would also be commissioned by the end of next year", he added.
Punjab has a generation capacity of 7249 Mw available from all sources and expected to add 3920 Mw by May 2014.
He stressed that the state utilities have brought down the transmission and distribution losses from 24% to 17.5% and hope to bring it further down to 15%.
"We are also encouraging use of CFLs and renewable sources of energy like Bio mass and solar energy, which have immense potential in Punjab. Bio mass energy would even help farmers earn an extra income of Rs 3000 – 4000 per acre by supplying raw material," he said.
He added that the cost of power may also come down with the new technologies used in generation.
The Deputy Chief Minister is optimistic but the industry has concern as all the projects are coal fired thermal power projects and availability of timely and good quality of coal may hamper the power generation.
