Kerala State Electricity Board Limited balancing act saves state from crisis

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Though Idukki district continues to witness poor rainfall, KSEBL has still managed to strike a right balance between local generation and outside purchase. Relatively low open market power prices has come to the public utility's aid. Nonetheless, if the southwest monsoon continues its bearish run, the balancing act would break down. At the moment, the state’s largest dam in Idukki has a storage of 22 per cent; last year it was 35 per cent. Last year, outside purchases began only by October, when it became clear that even the northeast monsoon would play truant. This water year, however, outside purchases have begun in July itself.

Transmission chief engineer Shaji N. N. said that there was nothing to panic. “Though we have begun purchasing from outside quite early, the power purchase cost is very nominal. The average per unit cost is less than Rs 3,” Mr Shaji said. There s another reason why he has ruled out a crisis. “Last water year, the ratio of outside purchases and internal generation was 80:20. I don’t think why we shouldn’t be able to better or at least sustain this ratio,” he said. The confidence stems from the thinking that rainfall incidence can never be worse than the last water year when both the southwest and northeast monsoons simply vanished after an initial promise.

The relatively low power purchase cost has enabled KSEBL to limit internal generation to 15 million units. The public utility is also ensuring that the outgo as a result of internal hydel generation does not outstrip inflow into the reservoirs. “We were able to step up internal generation to 15 MU in the last couple of days because the inflow was fairly decent these days,” said generation chief engineer Brijlal V.