Two-hour cut in Hyderabad, Vijayawada, Vizag, Tirupati and Warangal
Major cities in the State, including the State Capital, will face a two-hour power cut from Friday even as the power utilities have decided to impose heavy cuts in other areas.
In addition to Hyderabad, Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam, Tirupati and Warangal will face two-hour cut every day, while the load shedding, as the authorities call it, will be more pronounced in mandals and villages. The Transco took recourse to power cuts as the demand shot up to 305 million units a day, while the generation was 235 MU from all sources, including purchases.
Villages to be hit hard
According to officials, the duration of the power cut in district headquarters and municipal corporations would be fours hours and in towns and municipalities six hours. Mandal headquarters will face the brunt with an eight-hour cut, while the situation in villages will be worse as they will get power along with the supply for agricultural pumpsets, which is seven-hour supply.
The cut for all the places from Hyderabad down to villages would be implemented necessarily in two spells. Orders had been issued to the four distribution companies to compulsorily provide electricity from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. for lighting purpose in rural areas, in view of the students appearing for various examinations. The cuts are likely to continue till mid-April when the agriculture load is expected to tapper off gradually.
Keywords: Andhra power cuts, power supply
If India and its constituent state governments can shed their socialist tendencies and allow the power tariff be controlled by market forces then there will be plenty of investment opportunities. Since there is demand, individual or small group of investors can build energy efficient natural gas based power plants and sell the power to local customers. At the beginning this power could be just to augment the short fall in the state's supply and could lead to complete energy independence from the state. The government on its part should improve the infrastructure of the power grid. It is unlikely that any investment group would be interested in the behemoth power generation systems owned by the state. No government operation however well intended will not be efficient in every aspect of the operation. There should be pressure on the management and more so on the Indian worker to make the operation profitable. Where there is no incentive then it leads to degradation.
The problem is multifaceted. In efficiency in generation, storage (does it exist in India?) and transmission; Pilferage and political interference; and subsidized tariff system that doesn't encourage private investment. It is true India has abundance of Sun light, the efficiency of commercially available inexpensive solar cells is not high enough for a large scale production. It is beyond comprehension while Germany invests a lot on photocell technology development and commercialization, India on the other hand would float buying contracts to swindle peoples money.
On the other hand the burgeoning middle class could invest on solar panels to generate power for the household consumption. This micro scale investment by individuals would pay for itself in moderately short time. Banks should provide loans for this activity, which would be a win-win situation.
This is the result of lack of qualified professionals in political leadership in India unlike China and other developed countries. it is rather impossible for a country like India to overcome the power deficit unless conserted efforts are initiated seriously. God given Solar Power is readily available and we must exploit without any waste of time. High Quality performance Solar plants is the need of the hour whether it is on-grid or off-grid system. Decision making on the Feb'7 tenders received by APTransco and time-bound execution may change the scenario. Can AP take this challenge of power ?
Pray to Sun God to help with power cuts, now in A.P. Solar energy is the
way to go forward. Even the agricultural pump sets can be operated on
Solar energy. The Govt, instead of giving free power to the ryots, the
Govt can help the ryots to buy the solar equipment including pump sets,
by utilizing the bank loans. The Govt can help the ryots by standing
guarantee to the banks on behalf of ryots.
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