Rajahmundry: Even as the state government is making all out efforts to ensure power supply 24 hours from October 2 onwards in the state, it is going to be herculean task unless it strengthens the requisite infrastructure to do so. It is a fact that whenever there is a brief spell of rainfall with even low intensity gales, power cut is a common phenomenon in that area and the official reason given for it is to avoid any snapping of overhead transmission lines that may cause electric shock to either people or livestock located nearby.
A brief spell of heavy downpour with gales disrupted power supply in and around Rajahmundry on Wednesday evening and even after a day, the EPDCL authorities were struggling to restore the power supply in some areas.
Uprooting of electric poles, snapping of overhead power transmission lines and burning of transformers are very common after rainfall and the people wonder as to how the state government would ens-ure continuous power supply with such a poor infrastructure.
However, the EPDCL authorities maintain that in the recent past, the number of hours where power cut is being imposed has come down and they were making efforts to ensure uninturrupted power supply. They opine that as the state government was entering into agreements with various sources to draw power even from the central grid unlike the regular practise of doing so from southern grid, they would get adequate power to supply to the consumers of domestic, commercial and industrial sectors.
Moreover, the EPDCL has taken up 100 days paln of action to strengthen the infrastructure in the last few days by replacing the damaged electric poles, insulators, conductors and others to ensure uninturrupted power supply without facing any technical glitches.
Consumption pattern of power varies from district to district dep-ending upon several factors including cultivation of crops. For instance, in West Goda-vari, power consumption goes up during winter unlike in other districts as the farmers take up cultivation of crops like maize and others especially in upland areas drawing more water using electric pumpsets.
Energy requirement peaks up to 750 mw a day in the district at times while average power consumption hovers around 11.5 million units a day. Though the authorities are confident of ensuring continuous power supply, they confess that it is going to be a tough task to supply power to farm sector for nine hours as they have to erect poles, draw power lines, install transformers, strengthen feeder lines.
