After a week’s respite, power cuts are back with the Southern Power Distribution Company Limited (SPDCL) once again imposing ‘emergency load relief’ (ELR) from Wednesday.
The latest spell of ELR is for three hours each in Vijayawada city and Machilipatnam, four hours in all other municipal towns, five hours in mandal headquarters and for longer durations in villages.
For now, people have been spared of power cuts at nights, but things are expected to change soon, with the SPDCL being forced to extend the ELR beyond dusk as well. The situation is expected to deteriorate with the demand going up as the summer progresses notwithstanding the coming on stream of a 500 MW unit of NTPC at Ramagundam that was shut for repairs, in a couple of days.
As on Tuesday, the deficit stood at around 1,500 MW in the State, which is bound to up. Officials put the total demand at 13,000 MW as against the availability of 11,500 MW.
Meanwhile, power holidays are under implementation in the industrial sector throughout the six operational circles in SPDCL on different days and the picture on this front too looks dismal for two reasons.
The first one is the overall shortage of power and the other is the need to maintain supply for at least seven hours to the agricultural sector whose requirement is expected to come down from April when the Rabi season draws to a close.
