Hyderabad: The trial run of 24x7 free power supply to agriculture since November 6 has proved to be successful in all the districts but brought to light that farmers were utilising the benefit 24x7 raising concern over depletion of groundwater.
The trial run found that there is peak demand for power in the morning when majority of the farmers switch on their pumpsets.
Speaking at a meeting with power officials on Sunday, Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao said the use of auto-starters was the prime reason for pumpsets running 24x7. He directed officials to take up a special drive to remove auto starters from December 5. He also asked them to educate farmers on the adverse impact of using pumpsets round the clock just because the government is providing for free.
The CM said if there is no groundwater, there would be no use in giving 24x7 free power to farmers.
The government has been supplying round the clock power from the midnight of November 6 for 23 lakh pump sets on an experimental basis.
The government initially planned to supply for five to six days to study the impact. It extended the test run for two weeks to conduct in-depth studies on the burden on transformers and 400 KV sub stations.
TS Transco and Genco CMD D Prabhakar Rao said the experiment would continue till the midnight of November 20. Mr Prabhakar Rao said regular nine-hour power supply would resume from November 21. The 24-hour scheme would start on January 1, as directed by the Chief Minister.
“In the old Medak, Karimnagar and Nalgonda districts, 24-hour power supply was given on an experimental basis since last July. With this, an evaluation could be arrived at on these three districts. For the past 14 days, we are supplying 24-hour power to the agriculture pump sets in the state. As a result we got clarity on what will be the demand in the entire state, situation district-wise, additional load transformers-wise and sub stations-wise etc,” he said.
“Farmers told us that some of them were running the pump sets for 24 hours leading to depletion of the groundwater. This can be solved by removing the auto-starters and the farmers should remove voluntarily,” Mr Prabhakar Rao said.
“If the groundwater is depleted, then giving 24-hour power supply will serve no purpose. It is important to utilise water judiciously. The field-level officers should educate farmers on this matter. The CM has decided to make an appeal to farmers in this regard once again,” the CMD stated.
