Hyderabad: Officials say that the power deficit in Telangana is currently 1,700MW, and summer isn’t here yet. “We have available power of 4,300MW, but the demand is more than 6,000MW,” officials informed Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao on Wednesday. They said that supplying power for six hours to agricultural pumpsets during the Rabi season would be a problem, but the CM asked them to prioritise farmers and directed them to purchase power in the open market wherever possible.
Mr Rao told them that some deficit would be met by the turn of the year as another 2,000MW would be made available by then through existing power plants and the Central pool. He told officials that 1,000 MW power from Chhattisgarh would be available after mid-2016. Another 1,080MW would be available from Singareni, taking the total available power to 8,500MW by 2016. “I think by then, we will be in a position to supply power for half a day to the farmers,” he added.
Chhattisgarh is ready to sell another 1,000MW and Mr Rao advised officials to prepare an MoU with the state for the same. The transmission line development from Chhattisgarh, for getting the power, has been taken up by PGCL and it shall also be expedited. Mr Rao has declared that the proposed thermal power plant at Manuguru in Khammam district will be named Bhadradri Power Plant.
BHEL has been awarded the contract and a sum of Rs 350 crore has already been released for the same. The CM has also allocated TSGenco another Rs 1,000 crore for execution of projects. “Generation of 24,000MW of power by 2018 shall be achieved, out of which 21,350MW will be through thermal plants and 2,250 MW through hydel plants,” he said.
