Hyderabad: In the wake of Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao’s decision to provide 24x7 power to the agriculture sector, TS Transco has decided to segregate power feeders and provide dedicated power feeders to the agriculture sector, in order to make supply more efficient across sectors.
Transco has estimated the cost of setting up separate power feeders, transformers and laying distribution lines to be about Rs 2,000 crore and has written to the Union power ministry requesting financial assistance under the ‘Power for All’ scheme.
Domestic and agriculture sectors get power through common power feeders. The agriculture sector gets power for nine hours daily in two spells. When power is being supplied to farmers, domestic users face problems when the feeders are the same. Separating the feeders ensures that farmers get electricity and the quality of supply and its availability for households will improve.
Transco officials say that feeder segregation is the separation of technical infrastructure of agriculture and non-agriculture consumers.
In rural areas all consumers are connected on the same feeder, so power supply to non-agriculture consumers such as households and schools gets switched off when power supply to agriculture is stopped.
Gujarat and Rajasthan have implemented feeder segregation and the results show that complaints of low voltage have fallen from 80 per cent to just six per cent.
At present, Transco has no data or record of how much power the agriculture sector alone consumes. With the segregation of feeders, such an assessment will be possible. If there is clear data available on agriculture power consumption, subsidies can be better targeted. Some political parties are demanding nine continuous hours of power to farmers. But a survey found that a majority of farmers want power to be supplied in two spells, one of six hours and the other of three hours. If power is supplied continuously for nine hours, farmers say the bore wells will run dry.
Rural electrification
The energy department has purchased the single-phase and three-phase meters from ECIL, H.A.L. and Genus Power Infrastructure.
A single-phase prepaid meter costs Rs 8,600 and a 3-phase prepaid meter Rs 11,300. They will be installed free in government offices.
Rs 80cr was provided by the Centre under Integrated Power Development Scheme.
