Union Minister of State for Power Piyush Goyal on Saturday warned electrical equipment manufacturers and suppliers of “running down their business” by blacklisting them throughout the country if they try to compromise with quality by using second-grade materials.
Inaugurating ‘ELECRAMA-2016’, which covers various aspects of power sector, here, the Minister made it clear that the Centre would not tolerate compromise in quality as that would affect services as well as life of the equipment.
He particularly warned against use of low-grade materials and recycled copper in transformers and other power equipment. The Centre would take measures to ensure that such suppliers, found wanting in quality parameters, were banned not just from Central establishments, but also in the State sector, he said.
Mr. Goyal asked the State governments to draw up a plan of action for providing power connection within 15 days of receiving the request. By 2019, the country wanted to put in place a system of providing new power connection within 24 hours, he said.
Southern region transmission
The power-starved southern region can look forward to getting adequate additional power from power-surplus States in four years when the transmission capacity of this region would be increased five times.
Presently, different parts of the country have surplus power. But southern region reels under power shortage during summer because the climatic seasons of the country are not uniform. When the demand for power reaches its peak during summer in the southern region, there are several northern States that have surplus because of rain.
But the southern region has not been able to capitalise on this due to the congestion in transmission capacity, he said.
Mr. Goyal said the Centre had taken up works to increase the transmission capacity of the southern region by 71 per cent in the last 18 months. It was bound to be increased by another 80 per cent in the next 18 months, the Minister said.
