No usage data to hit K Chandrasekhar Rao's farm plan

Hyderabad: The implementation of Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao’s announcement that the agriculture sector will get free power supply 24x7 will not be easy. Although TS Transco is ready to supply conti-nuous power to the agriculture sector, there are technical problems that must be overcome first. There are more than 21 lakh official agriculture connections in Telan-gana. Most farmers use auto start motors for their agriculture wells. Since these auto start motors have no meters, the energy department has no data regarding consumption of power by the agriculture sector.

Auto start motors do not have an on-and-off switch and run automatically whenever power is supplied. The energy department says that unless meters are attached to every agriculture connection, it will be unable to assess the amount of power consumed by this sector. In the absence of meters if power is supplied 24x7, problems will arise in grid management.

The maintenance of grid frequency is very important. If the grid collapses, the entire region covered by the grid will have a black out. But if there is data on which sector consumes how much power, then the grid frequency can be maintained. Without data on the consumption of power, the Central Electricity Authority is also not allowed to supply 24x7 power to the agriculture sector in view of grid management.

Transco officials are restraining agricultural consumers from using auto start motors for political reasons. The existence of auto start motors helps the energy department to show low transmission and distribution losses because they can attribute some percentage of the losses to the agriculture sector since there is no data about how much power the agriculture sector actually consumes.

TS Transco director (operations and grid management) G. Narasinga Rao said that before supplying 24x7 power to the agriculture sector, all the existing auto start motors in this sector should be removed and meters should be fixed. Speaking to this newspaper, he said that in the absence of meters, they have no data regarding consumption of power by the agriculture sector.  Once the meters are fixed, they will be able to assess the consumption and plan accordingly. In fact, if meters are fixed to all agriculture connections now, power can be supplied 24x7 to this sector right now with the present network.