AP CM urges Centre to form solar association

Hyderabad: Andhra Pradesh government has sent a proposal to the Centre to take lead for forming solar countries association similar to SAARC for exchanging technology, harnessing natural resources and protecting environment for future generations for the benefit of human kind.

Such an association will help sharing of information pertaining to the success and failures of various modules that are being implemented in various countries. It would also help the State government in studying the best practices across the globe so that the State could be benefitted, AP Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu told officials of AP power utilities at a review meeting on Sunday.

Naidu told the officials that his utmost priority was to provide quality, reliable and affordable power. He said the Centre was helping the State government in all respects and now it was for the officials to prove their mettle and see that 24x7 power for all becomes a grand success. The officials should also make sure that all power projects were implemented in the shortest possible time so that the future needs of the new capital, ports, IT, industries and other sectors could be met. Naidu said that the State government proposed to invest around Rs 4,880 crore on distribution network which included setting up of feeders and distribution transformers.

CMD, AP Discoms, said the power utilities had targeted generation of 9,180 MW through Nonconventional Energy Sources (NCE) such as solar and wind by 2018-19.

The Chief Minister directed top power officials to nominate a nodal officer for each project for which MoU was signed recently and closely monitor the progress of works on regular basis. Energy Secretary Ajay Jain apprised the Chief Minister of the various measures that were being taken both long term and short term to meet the power requirements of the State.