Naidu opens Amaravati for energy experiments

Vijayawada: Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Thursday opened up the new capital, Amaravati, for global experiments in energy. He said his government would support every company that would take up research and experiments on energy savings.

• Naidu inaugurates a 2-day international seminar on efficient energy organised jointly by State and the Central governments
• Hints at using more solar and wind power in all sectors in the State

Naidu inaugurated the two-day international seminar on efficient energy organised jointly by the energy departments of both State and Central governments. He said his government between 1998 and 2004 was the first in the country to introduce reforms in power sector. The reforms proved its worth and the State had advanced in power generation and supply by bringing down the transmission and distribution losses.

The Chief Minister said that State, after bifurcation had overcome 22 million units power shortage and now the State is power surplus only because of the reforms he had introduced in the power sector during his earlier stint. He welcomed the companies and institutions across the world that are engaged in power technology to use Andhra Pradesh as launching ground for all their inventions. He said that the government would extend total support for any experiment on power issues.

Naidu said that Andhra Pradesh had taken up the initiative of replacing the traditional power consuming bulbs with the LEDs in Visakhapatnam. The replacement of the bulbs with the LEDs was extended to every other city in a phased manner first from domestic to street lightings. The urban local bodies were asked to replace entire street lights with the LEDs and save power, he said and added that this system would be applied to the rural local bodies shortly. The State government was aiming at maximum power saving and bring down the power losses to the lowest of 5 per cent, he said.

The government has also started to replace the electricity motor pumpsets in the agriculture sector with the solar pumps and would soon introduce solar and wind power in the State, he said and welcomed the power companies to start units in the State. He asserted that the government would use the wind and solar power mostly to minimise the conventional energy.

He also announced that the State government would establish Energy University in the State to promote solar and wind energy. The State Energy Principal Secretary Ajay Jain, World Bank representative Ashok Sarkar, Chinese energy conservation centre deputy director Zhiquiang Xu, energy efficiency services limited managing director Saurab Kumar and others spoke.