People in all spheres of life across Telangana State are bearing the brunt of power cuts from 4 to 18 hours a day even as the southwest monsoon is retreating. Industrial, agriculture and domestic sectors are the worst hit.
Power installations have started regulating supply by imposing power cuts officially and effecting unscheduled cuts in addition, five months in advance before the onset of summer. Energy officials are showing the shortage at 500 to 550 MW, though the actual deficit is about 1,500 MW.
Farming community, particularly those cultivating crops under borewells, is struggling hard to save the standing crops with the limited power supply of 4 to 5 hours a day. The industrial sector is affected even worse as power holiday has been imposed once a week and the daily supply for the rest of the week not touching eight hours.
The district headquarters town of Nizamabad is going without power six hours a day in two spells, eight hours in other towns and 12 hours or more in villages. Superintending Engineer C. Prabhakar said there was a shortage of over 100 MW in the district as supply was not going beyond 348 MW against the required 450 MW.
In Warangal, people are forced to put up with long hours of power cuts due to huge demand-supply gap. “Only 1,500 MW power is made available to the district against the demand of 2,100 MW. It is being given alternately dividing consumers into groups”, Chief General Manager (Operations) of Northern Power Distribution Company Md. Younis stated.
Crops withering Standing crops in Karimnagar district are withering due to prevailing dry weather and erratic power supply. The situation is reflected in the fact that farmers are staging protests as they are getting supply only for 4-5 hours in two-three spells. In Adilabad, the schedule for power cuts put out by officials does not have any meaning as load is being shed, seemingly at will.
In the industrially-dense Medak district, officials are planning to impose two days of power holiday every week to the industrial sector to overcome the crisis. Some industrial units are using diesel generators to keep their production on, while some entrepreneurs are believed to be considering shifting their units to other areas where they are assured of better power supply.
Poor inflows Power cuts in Khammam district are threatening to take a heavy toll on the standing crops as the demand is going up during the fag end of kharif operations. Officials said that the district is getting 4.9 million units of power against the requirement of 6.2 MU every day. The situation is no different in Nalgonda district, where only 18 MU is being supplied against the demand of 22.5 MU. Hydro-power generation at Srisailam and Nagarjunasagar projects has also come down due to poor inflows.
In Mahabubnagar, the demand for power supply from sector has gone up in the recent weeks in spite of normal monsoon due to dry weather and in Ranga Reddy the farmers are forced to rely exceedingly on diesel pump sets to save their crops.
(With inputs from S. Harpal Singh, K.M. Dayashankar, Gollapudi Srinivasa Rao, P. Ram Mohan, R. Avadhani, P. Sridhar, T. Karnakar Reddy and N. Rahul)
