Incentive offered to slash power use

Cut by 10%, avoid power cut: Aryadan

April 12, 2013 03:51 am | Updated 03:59 am IST - PATHANAMTHITTA:

The Kerala State Electricity Board could reduce its monthly loss by Rs.200 crore by stepping up the load-shedding to six hours. Yet, the government was not for increasing the load-shedding hours due to its commitment to the people, Electricity Minister Aryadan Mohammed has said.

The Minister was inaugurating the newly constructed Vydyuthi Bhavan at a cost of Rs.4.5 crore here on Thursday. According to him, the State’s power consumption on Wednesday alone was 60 million units against the domestic power production of merely 12 million units. The State had been spending Rs.770 to Rs.800 crore a month on power purchase. This was in addition to the purchase of power at Rs.12.40 a unit from the thermal power unit of the National Thermal Power Corporation at Kayamkulam, he said.

Mr. Mohammed said the government was supplying electricity that cost Rs.14 a unit at a heavily subsidised rate of Rs.4.65 for domestic use. If one bulb was switched off by each household a day, at least 480 MW of electricity could be saved across the State, he said.

The Minister said those localities where people could reduce their power consumption by 10 per cent would be exempted from load-shedding.

Mr Mohammed said the government aimed at generating 250 MW of power by setting up small and medium hydro-electric projects as well as solar energy units. He said 400 MW of electricity would be produced using Liquid Natural Gas at Brahmapuram.

A Memorandum of Understanding had been signed to generate 200 MW wind energy. Another project was under preparation for generating 100 MW solar power by installing solar panels on the rooftops of government buildings, he said.

The Minister said the electrical section office at Aranmula would be brought under the Pathanamthitta Electrical division. K. Sivadasan Nair, MLA, presided. Anto Antony, MP; Saji Chacko, district panchayat president; A. Sureshkumar, municipal chairman; P. Mohanraj, District Congress Committee president; Joe Ennackad, George Varghese, M.A. Rahman, LDF district leaders; Annamma John, KSEB member (generation); V. Viswanathan Nair, and A.S. Dasappan, chief engineers, spoke.

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.