Electricity Minister Aryadan Mohammed has said that Kerala will be the State with the worst power crisis in the country, if it failed to augment its power generation and power import capacity by 2021.
The Minister was inaugurating the work on the proposed 6-MW mini hydro-electric project on the Perunthenaruvi stream at Chathanthara, near Vechoochira, in Ranni taluk on Sunday.
According to him, the State's present daily power need has been put at 3,100 MW against its daily production of 1,000 MW. The State has been meeting the production-demand gap with the allocation from the Central pool and by purchasing electricity from other States.
Mr. Mohammed said the State's daily power requirement would shoot up to 6,000 MW by 2021.
He said the Kerala State Electricity Board had incurred loss of Rs.1,350 crore by purchasing electricity at a higher price from other States and supplying it to the consumers at a lower price in the previous financial year alone.
Though former Electricity Minister A.K. Balan had taken an initiative to set up a 1,050-MW thermal power plant in Kasaragod, it failed to materialise because of opposition from environmentalists.
Kerala had a stake in the NTPC's atomic power plant at Koodamkulam in Tamil Nadu. But, the Power Grid Corporation could not yet extend the transmission lines to bring the State's share of 240 MW from Koodamkulam owing to public protest, he said. There were also apprehensions over the route of the transmission lines through the SmartCity project area, he added.
Anto Antony, MP, inaugurated a public meeting held in connection with the stone-laying ceremony of the project. Raju Abraham, MLA, presided over the function. Babu Prasad and Annamma John, KSEB members; V. Viswanathan Nair, Chief Engineer; Benny Puthenparambil, block panchayat president; and K.J. Joseph, Vechoochira panchayat president, spoke.
