The Hindu Business Line : End of rabi farm operations to partly ease AP power situation

Hyderabad, April 23 With the demand from the rabi crop set to be done by the month-end, the overall power scenario in Andhra Pradesh is likely to improve and partially ease the tight demand-supply situation.

The State’s average demand met in the last two months has been in the range of 200-220 million units, with power cuts ranging from six hours in the rural areas and power holiday for high tension industrial consumers. This is against peak requirement of about 235-240 million units a day, when rabi farm sector operations are in full swing. The Government is supplying seven hours of power to the farm sector to support bore wells.

Meeting demand

While the demand may continue in some cases up to middle of May due to late rabi crop, according to Government sources, the situation will largely improve by the month-end. However, the power cut situation for high tension power users, domestic consumers in the rural areas and some towns is likely to continue as the summer demand is poised to go up during May.

According to today’s requirement, with power cuts of about six hours in rural areas, about three-four hours in urban areas and up to three days a week power holiday, the demand is at about 200-215 million units. This is being met with running all coal-based plants at high plant load factor and also resorting to power purchase from Central generating stations. The energy output from hydel sources has come down to about 4 million units as the reservoir levels have come down in the last three months due to power generation and support to farm sector.

However, the demand was partially met by running some of the gas-based power plants with natural gas diverted from Lanco and GVK and using the same for other plants such as GMR Vemagiri. In turn, the GVK and Lanco plants are being run by naphtha.

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