Centre assures addl power, coal to AP

Hyderabad: The Andhra Pradesh government, which is taking steps to revamp the entire power sector for enhancing generation capacity, has been assured by the Centre of additional power and coal supplies to the State.

This assurance comes in the wake of Andhra Pradesh being selected as the nodal State for the implementation of 'Power For All' (PFA) programme initiated by the Centre. Two states, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan, have been selected by the Centre for this programme.

A delegation-led by the Joint Secretary to Union Ministry of Power Jyoti Arora on Friday met the officials of the AP Energy department including state Special Secretary (Energy) Ajay Jain here.

Jyoti gave an assurance to extend support in ensuring allotment of unallocated power from Central Generating Stations (CGS), additional coal blocks for existing thermal power plants so as to run the power plants at maximum Plant Load Factor (PLF), extending financial support for electrification of un-electrified households, strengthening of transmission and distribution and metering, infrastructure development etc. to meet the additional demand going to increase due to extension of 24X7 power supply to all households.

State officials explained the Central delegation about the power crisis being faced AP and the coal and gas scarcity to generate power and optimum utilisation of the installed capacity in the generation stations.

Jain said the State was facing 500 MW power deficit every day due to non-availability of fuel. A blue print on PFA would be prepared and submitted to the Centre within a fortnight, he added. The meeting decided that a detailed project report (DPR) would be ready in about 15 days of time which would explain the long-term measures.
Power procurement on a monthly and yearly basis, a long term transmission requirement plan for enhancing Inter-state and Intra-state transmission capacity and DPR on Feeder Segregation scheme listing out details like investment requirement, Central government support etc would also be included in the DPR, according to energy officials.

Jyoti is one of the members in the committee which was constituted to study the controversy over the cancellation of PPAs entered by APGENCO with the four Discoms in the undivided State. She is said to have enquired the status of the agreements and the supply of power to the Discoms after scrapping the PPAs. The officials learnt to have informed the official of the Power ministry that power supply to the utilities was stopped after the State fell into energy crisis in the new State of AP.