The Hindu : Decision on more load-shedding deferred

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jun 17, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Kerala-Thiruvananthapuram

Decision on more load-shedding deferred

By Our Special Correspondent

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM JUNE 16. The KSEB would watch the performance of the monsoon for three more days before deciding whether or not to go for further restrictions in power supply.

In a press release issued today, the Electricity Minister, Kadavoor Sivadasan, said a high-level meeting of the officials would be convened on Thursday to review the situation on the power generation front.

The officials met in the presence of the Minister today and felt that a decision could wait for three more days since there were signs of the monsoon starting to pick up. The catchment areas of the hydel reservoirs received some rains over three days, though not on a scale that could bring on the smiles.

The scheduled meeting on Thursday would take stock of the rain's progress, availability of power from the Central stations and the Power Trading Corporation, in addition to the prospects of getting free flow of electricity from the Eastern Grid. The Thalchar-Kolar transmission line, which brings power from the Eastern Grid to Kerala, is now under repairs.

Mr. Sivadasan said the KSEB was also pinning its hopes on the weather forecast that the monsoon would pick up over Kerala in the next couple of days.

As of today, the hydel reservoirs in the State had water enough to generate only 240 million units of power. The generation at the hydel stations was now being retained at the level of 10 million units a day. Though this would imply that the storage position was sufficient to keep the stations running for 24 more days at the current rate, it was not technically feasible to do so, the Minister said.

The reservoirs received inflow worth 2.5 million units on June 13, 4.16 million units on June 14 and 3.54 million units on June 15. Yesterday the rains in the catchment areas averaged one centimetre.

He said there was a temporary shortage of 80 MW of power in the supply to the State from the Ramagundam station of the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC). This was due to some repairs being done on one of the generators there. By June 30, the flow of power from Ramagundam would be restored to the normal level.

He also refuted the allegation that the present crisis was on account of the Government's decision to surrender half the quantity of power generated at the Kayamkulam station of the NTPC to Tamil Nadu. "We have surrendered our right over 180 MW of Kayamkulam power to Tamil Nadu to avoid paying the high cost of the electricity from that station. Instead, we are drawing an equal quantity of low cost power from the other Central stations. We will be saving around Rs. 150 crores annually through this switch'' he said.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Southern States

Stories in this Section

Traders oppose traffic regulation at Chalai

RCC gets high-energy linear accelerator

MCA applications invited

Decision on more load-shedding deferred