Date:15/09/2006 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2006/09/15/stories/2006091522630100.htm

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Power crisis due to lack of planning?

M. Malleswara Rao

Six-hour power cut in towns to continue

HYDERABAD: Early warnings by the Agriculture Department about a steep increase in the area under borewell irrigation during the kharif season were ignored by the AP Transco. This appears to be the primary cause of the present power crisis.

By the end of May itself, the department released the kharif action plan, forecasting that the area served by pump sets would go up substantially due to availability of free power and early onset of rain.

As forecast, the area under borewells went up from 8 lakh to 14 lakh hectares this year, most of it paddy, a water-intensive crop. As a result, there was heavy pressure on the grid from the 24 lakh pump sets, a majority of which are in Telangana and Rayalaseema.

Adding to the problem, AP Transco allowed outage of a 500 MW unit of Simhadri project at Visakhapatnam and three other units at Vijayawada, Ramagundam, and Neyveli (all 590 MW) for annual overhaul. A few more units tripped while eight gas-based units of Lanco, Spectrum and Vijjeswaram were forced to stop activity for want of natural gas, accounting for additional 1,000 MW loss.

Gas Authority of India Limited is supplying less than 60 per cent of their fuel recruitment. "APTransco ought to have resolved the issue of adequate gas supply before the onset of monsoon and postponed annual overhaul of thermal units," a senior agriculture official told The Hindu. Supply was further crippled with the Government deciding not to enhance generation at Srisailam dam in spite of fresh inflows.

Farmers' demonstrations

APTransco Chairman and Managing Director Rachel Chatterjee reiterated on Thursday that power cut on towns would continue for six hours a day to ensure 7-hour supply to pump sets while the rural areas are already experiencing the ordeal for most part of the day.

Meanwhile, demonstrations by farmers near electricity sub-stations continued. So far, there have been 35 such dharnas, over 60 attacks and seven cases of detention of electricity officials by irate farmers. Till now, 74 persons have been electrocuted due to short-circuit and a few farmers have died of snake bite while going to the field to switch on their pump sets.