Rising mercury level in the State and constant high demand from the farm sector pushed up the intra-day peak load of power on the transmission system in Telangana to a new high of 15,497 megawatt on Thursday, after some slippage in the demand due to the impact of untimely rains for about two weeks.
The peak load that included the roof-top solar generation was recorded at 11.01 am surpassing the previous highest of 15,254 MW clocked on March 14. The peak load is expected to cross the 16,000 MW barrier this summer season, particularly during the pre-harvesting weeks of paddy crop, when it requires more water for proper grain formation.
For record, paddy this rabi season has been transplanted in 56.45 lakh acres out of the record-setting extent of 72.63 lakh acres for the second crop season. With about 26 lakh agricultural pump-sets drawing groundwater to meet irrigation needs of paddy, maize, vegetables and other horticultural crops including fruit orchards/plantations this season, the power utilities have estimated the farm consumption at 37% of the total energy consumption in the State.
The energy consumption is also expected to be over 300 million units a day during the peak agricultural operations period during the ongoing summer season. It has crossed the 300 MU mark only once so far – on March 3 with consumption recorded at 303.43 MU. As such Telangana is second in terms of energy consumption after Tamil Nadu and third in terms of peak load after TN and Karnataka in the South.
“In February, the consumption of energy was over 290 MU on 6 days and more than that of Karnataka’s highest consumption on 10 days. This month, it was more than 290 MU on 12 days before it went down due to untimely rains. However, it has started picking up from March 28(288.55 MU)”, a TS-Transco engineers explained. The utilities require procurement up to 75 MU energy from the exchange every day at high rates in case the consumption is around 300 MU.
Streamlining coal supplies
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Power has stepped in to ensure fair distribution of available domestic coal to power generating companies (Gencos) of Central and State Governments and independent power producers during April-June period starting April 1 to avoid repeat of last summer’s situation due to coal scarcity.
The MoP assessed that against the requirement of 222 million tonnes of domestic coal, the availability would be 201 MT during the period and has decided to allocate it in the ration of fortnightly average generation of Gencos.
TS-Genco with generation capacity of 5,242.5 MW was placed fourth in the country among Central and State Gencos for the March 1-13 period with average generation of 114 MU a day including 61 MU generation through supply of coal by railway rakes. Accordingly, availability of rakes is being increased to 10 a day from present 9.
