The Hindu : Power cut lifted totally

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Oct 16, 2002

Southern States

Southern States - Andhra Pradesh

Power cut lifted totally

By Our Special Correspondent

Hyderabad Oct. 15. Power cut both in the night as well as during the day was lifted from Monday, even for the rural areas in the State, with the AP Transco bridging the wide gap between demand and supply helped by the widespread rain for four days in a row.

For now, there is no cut of any sort in any sector and the entire unrestricted demand which is around 120 million units per day is being met as that much output is "easily available.'' With this, lighting load is fully allowed whether for towns or rural areas. Uninterrupted nine-hour supply is being strictly ensured as a must to the agriculture sector but with soils being already wet, most farmers are not operating the pumpsets, according to reports reaching the Vidyuth Soudha.

The unexpected rains, caused by a trough of low pressure in the West Central Bay off the Andhra coast for the past few days, offered a big relief, at least for the time being, by pushing down the demand, especially that of pumpsets. The grid on Tuesday was capable of meeting the demand up to 125 million units without any difficulty, but the demand tumbled to 118 million units. U. Venkataramana, Chief Engineer, Grid Operations, described the situation as "comfortable'' temporarily even with the shutdown of the Simhadri second unit (500 MW) and the Kothagudem sixth unit (110 MW) due to problems in the cooling system and turbine respectively. The Neyveli plant picked up momentum, taking the churning to 1,010 MW out of which Andhra Pradesh was getting 200 MW as its share.

The low demand was due to the day being a public holiday when industries, shops/commercial establishments, and Government offices remain closed. It is expected to pick up from tomorrow and if the rains subside, the relief may not last long. The rains also began to help reservoirs. Srisailam, for the first time in many days, started getting an inflow of 70,730 cusecs on Tuesday but this was not from Almatti.

The heavy inflow was reaching the place from Tungabhadra, Roza and some intermediary catchments. Almatti is full with the storage going up to 128.16 tmcft, but whatever is released from the dam is being absorbed by a downstream Karnataka dam, Narayanpur, which is reportedly not full yet. So, discharges from this end are ruled out for the time being. Meanwhile, the storage in Srisailam touched 808.56 ft (against its FRL of 885ft) after absorbing the latest gain. The place has a heavy capacity of 1,670 MW out of the two hydel stations on the right and left banks, but right now none of the units is being harnessed. The units, if at all, are run to meet the peak hour demand from 6 pm.

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