5-point programme for power utilities

HYDERABAD: The state government has directed the power utilities to adopt a five-point programme to provide supply to all categories of consumers with special focus on the agricultural sector.  The plan will be to maintain adequate coal stocks at thermal power stations, purchase additional power to meet the demand, to strictly ensure seven hours of power supply without deviation, conduct substation-level meetings and to maintain sufficient rolling stock of distribution transformers (DTRs).Disclosing these details, principal secretary (energy) Dinesh Kumar said here on Saturday that the objective of the government was to ensure that the requirements of the entire farming community were taken care of with special attention on predominantly agricultural  districts such as Karimnagar, Warangal, Nalgonda, Nizamabad, Medak, Mahaboobnagar, Chittoor and West Godavari where nearly half of the state's 29.85 lakh pump sets exist.This year alone, till date, power distribution companies (Discoms) have released around 75,000 agricultural power connections as against the target of 1.5 lakh. Instructions have been given to release the remaining by March on priority basis but duly complying with the requisite ‘demand side management' (DSM) measures. The state stood second after Maharashtra in providing services to farmers and is the only state where free power is being provided to farmers.In spite of major challenges and severe constraints in meeting the unprecedented power demand, the utilities are making all possible efforts by running all generating plants at the optimum plant load factor (PLF) by maintaining adequate coal stocks and also by purchasing additional power from outside apart from utilising the extra transmission corridor allocated recently for procuring power from other regions.  Discoms are gearing up to replace malfunctioning DTRs within the stipulated time of 24 hours in rural areas and 48 hours in urban areas without causing any inconvenience and financial burden to consumers.  The government asked Discom chairmen-cum-managing directors G.Anantha Ramu, Ahmed Nadeem, Ch.Narasimha Reddy and K.Vidya Sagar Reddy to maintain sufficient rolling stock (4 pc) for timely replacement of failed DTRs and specifically suggested to them to work out modalities for conducting substation-level meetings duly involving local public representatives for getting feedback on power supply position during the ensuing Rabi season.Discoms should stick to the implementation of the special programme _  providing one lakh DTRs every year _ to prevent overloading of transformers and to improve the voltage profile, Dinesh Kumar said.