Southern States - Andhra Pradesh-Hyderabad

CM inaugurates hi-tech power distribution facility

By Our Special Correspondent

Hyderabad, May 31. The State's first major computer-aided power distribution and remote control of supply facility established at Erragadda here was inaugurated on Friday by the Chief Minister, N. Chandrababu Naidu. The facility, named Electricity Remote Control Centre, serves Hyderabad and its surrounding areas, including nine peripheral municipalities.

The facility, consists of a building housing microwave communication equipment and network control system called Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA), has been set up by the AP Central Power Distribution Company at a cost of Rs. 32 crores given by the DFID of the UK as an outright grant. For the present, the centre covers a 1,555-sq km area, ensuring power supply to all the 10 lakh consumers in the Twin Cities and the municipalities and monitoring its quality by reading and rectifying the 12 specified parameters of the flow.

The centre has the capacity to cover 24 sub-stations more for the present and 300 additionally at a later stage, according to its CMD, T. V. S. N. Prasad. Discussions were on with DFID and it had reportedly agreed to fund construction of even 20 sub-stations in Nalgonda district.

Accompanied by the Energy Minister, K. Subbarayudu, Mr. Prasad, Sally Taylor, head of AP State Team, DFID, Peter Davies, head for energy division, and a host of AP Transco officials, including its CMD, P. Ramakantha Reddy, the Chief Minister went round the centre which also the facility to receive complaints by voice or fax.

A Telugu Desam leader from Kalwakurthy came online and sought ex- gratia for the families the farmers who died while rectifying the lines in the absence of the company staff, while a farmer from Siddipet sought a transformer.

Mr. Naidu was delighted to know the quality of the supply flow, assessing it based on the indicators like voltage, frequency, etc.

He was told by officials that the centre would instantly come to know if there was any breakdown and would be able to pinpoint the specific defect. Restoration could be done within three seconds, they said.

The Chief Minister described the facility as a landmark development ranked as the "best in these parts of the globe.''

In his speech from the dais which was also shared by the Tourism Minister, T. Srinivas Yadav, S. Venugopalachary, MP, G. Sayanna, area's MLA apart from the British officials, the Chief Minister underscored reforms in a sector like power which played crucial role in development.

He congratulated Mr. Prasad for the APCDCL initiatives and said he had given full autonomy to AP Genco, AP Transco and the discoms and he would reward those showing good performance with incentives and punish those who did not work.

Ms. Sally Taylor described Andhra Pradesh as the leading State in reforms and said one should not mind costs if there were ample benefits.

Mr. Prasad gave a list of a few more initiatives being launched by his company and they included a plan to give LT-less (high voltage) supply to all consumers in Hyderabad by March 2003 and thus bring down the TD losses to 10 per cent from the present 31 per cent, but the Chief Minister wanted this job completed by this December itself.

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