Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, who directed the energy sector officials to explore means to reduce power tariff by 2018-19 for the benefit of the people and overall economic development of the State, has suggested a five-point strategy to achieve the goal.
The roadmap
The strategy is as follows: (a) enhancing renewable energy generation; adopting best global practices in storage of solar power through batteries; and maintaining high plant load factor in all conventional generating stations (b) ensuring maximum implementation of energy efficiency measures by making every consumer use 3-5 star-rated electrical appliances (c) strengthening transmission and distribution network and reducing technical and commercial losses to less than 6% in a phased manner (d) adopting latest IT initiatives for providing world-class consumer services and (e) effective financial management of various power projects and swapping of loans.
In a teleconference with the officials on Sunday, Mr. Naidu reiterated that Andhra Pradesh had a huge wind and solar energy potential, and storage should be the order of the day having achieved self-sufficiency on the generation front.
He pointed out that the steep fall in prices of solar power tariff to below ₹2 per unit gives flexibility to the producers to pass on the benefit to the consumers, and appealed to the people to install solar rooftops on a large scale to make their own houses generating stations.
Generation increases
Principal Secretary (Energy) Ajay Jain and AP-Genco MD and Transco CMD K. Vijayanand told the Chief Minister that energy generation had increased from 8,307 MW to 2,2973 MW in the past three years, of which renewable energy generation stood at 6,023 MW.
About ₹305 billion of investments were made in the renewable energy sector during the last three years (on 1,818 MW solar and 2,873 MW wind installations, and 10,939 solar pump-sets distributed in FY 2016-17).
Reduction of T&D losses, improving internal efficiencies, voltage profile strengthening, and practising demand side management measures resulted in reduction of losses from 12.34% in 2013-14 to 9.8% by the end of 2016. AP-Transco Joint Managing Director (Finance) Dinesh Paruchuri said as a part of implementing better economic strategies, high-cost interest loans were repaid by taking loans at low interest. By doing so, the power utilities could save ₹100 crore.
