Vijayawada: Best practices by Discoms bring down costs by Rs 126.15 crore

Vijayawada: State government's endeavour to save public money and the adoption of best practices by power utilities for the last two years began yielding good results.

The power distribution companies (Discoms) have saved Rs 126.15 crore in the first quarter of the financial year 2021-22 through cost effective power purchases by implementing best practices including reduction in distribution losses.

The APSPDCL has saved Rs 0.15 per unit by purchasing power in open market at lower rate and saved Rs 89.23 crore for purchase of 6013 MU of energy. Similarly APCPDCL saved Rs. 33.25 crore on power purchase of 3670.14 MU and APEPDCL has saved Rs. 3.67 crore.

Energy secretary N Srikant in a press release said the State government and the power utilities have decided to divert the savings of Rs 126.15 crore to electricity consumers to benefit them.

In view of this, the utilities submitted a request to APERC seeking permission to pass on the savings to consumers for three months. Srikant Nagulapalli further said that the utilities would utilise every opportunity to benefit consumers and strengthen the sector.

Any policy, programme or best practice being implemented in power sector is aimed at protecting the interests of consumers, he said. "The programmes of the State government in power sector are being implemented by power utilities in true spirit and yielded excellent results.

Our prime focus is always the consumers," said the energy secretary. He said that the power utilities were rendering services to around 1.9 crore electricity consumers in the State.