Power holiday for industries from Monday

The Southern Power Distribution Company Limited (SPDCL) has finally decided to impose power holiday on industrial consumers drawing electricity from dedicated and express feeders from the midnight of Sunday. Industries on mixed feeders are exempted from the power holiday.

SPDCL had initially planned to resort to emergency load relief for four hours every day but the proposal met with stiff resistance by industrialists, who preferred to go without power throughout a particular day once a week saying that daily disruptions would affect production.

Schedule of cut

It has thus been finally decided to impose power holiday on industries with immediate effect in Kadapa district on Mondays, Chittoor on Tuesdays, Nellore on Wednesdays, Prakasam on Thursdays, Guntur on Fridays and Krishna district on Saturdays.

In a press release on Saturday, SPDCL Chairman and Managing Director H.Y. Dora stated that the power holiday was necessitated by the need to keep the demand-supply gap under check and meet the requirement of the agricultural sector and sought cooperation of the industrialists for that. Rabi crops were particularly in need of consistent power supply.

Dip in demand in April

Agricultural demand is expected to come down only in April and as overall demand continued to rise with the onset of summer, SPDCL, like all other DISCOMs, is left with no option except to stop power supply to industries on a staggered basis.