Uttar Pradesh is in the grip of acute power crisis with restricted demand of electricity going up to about 13,000 mega watt and availability of power on Sunday ranging from 10,000-11,000 MW. The demand has gone up due to humid weather condition in the State.
To meet the demand, U.P. Power Corporation officials have resorted to emergency roistering as a result of which heavy power cuts were imposed in village and tehsil level, which were ensured of 14-15 hours of power supply.
Power cuts are also imposed in district headquarters and cities such as Lucknow, Agra and Noida. These three cities are entitled to 24 hours power supply.
Meanwhile, on Friday, Chief Secretary Alok Ranjan directed the officials to ensure at least 22 hours of power supply to Agra for promoting tourism.
Officials said power cuts in other cities and towns ranged between 9-15 hours.
To compound matters, a 500 mw unit of Anpara thermal power station has stopped functioning due to a snag and a 110 mw unit of Parichha has been closed for renovation work.
Future looks bleakWith demand for electricity going up each year , the power crisis is expected to multiply. Power engineers have warned that with no capacity addition, the State is bound to face a severe crisis in future.
“Not a single megawatt of power has been added in the last one year and the demand this year has increased by 1500 MW, the gap between demand and supply has widened,” said Shailendra Dubey, Chairman of All-India Power Engineers Federation.
Mr. Dubey said the restricted demand of 13,000 MW as of today in the State is projected to go up to more than 20,000 MW by the end of the 12th Five Year Plan in 2017.
The Federation has cautioned against the over-dependence on the private sector for increasing the generation capacity.
The Federation said the States should have at least 70 per cent share in the total generation to optimise the Grid operation and lower the cost of power. Mr. Dubey pointed towards Uttar Pradesh where memorandum of understanding were signed with 10 private players in December 2010 (when Mayawati was the Chief Minister) for setting up power utilities to generate 10,000 MW.
“Barring the 1980 MW plant in Lalitpur, work has not started on any of the other projects. Likewise, barring the 1980 MW Bara plant, work has not commenced on four other projects which were given to the private players on competitive bidding basis”, he added.
