The round-the-clock free power supply to agriculture sector was interrupted in the areas under Northern Power Distribution Company of Telangana Ltd (TSNPDCL) on Thursday following some “communication gap between the field level authorities, particularly those of Transmission Corporation of Telangana Ltd (TS-Transco) manning the sub-stations, and State Load Dispatch Centre (SLDC).
As a result, agricultural pump-sets did not work for most part of the day on Thursday in 17 districts as only single-phase supply was given instead of three-phase supply required by most of the connections. The authorities of Northern Discom informed farmers, who called their field offices, that three-phase supply would be given only after evening hours.
Sources explained that there was some mismatch in applying for slot-wise energy requirement during the day-time on Thursday with the Indian Energy Exchange and even after some frantic last-minute efforts the required allotment could not be secured. As a result, demand-supply gap was created leading to only single-phase supply to farm connections in the Northern Discom areas.
The anticipation of the authorities that some allotment could be secured for day-time slots could not come true. “Otherwise, we could have switched at least two units of the Srisailam Left Bank Hydro-Electric Station to meet the demand on emergency basis”, a senior executive told The Hindu. Authorities of the Northern Discom too stated that interruption in 24×7 supply was due to some “internal problem”.
Admitting that there was some communication gap between the authorities has led to interruption in 24×7 power supply to agriculture sector on Thursday, Chairman and Managing Director of TS-Transco and TS-Genco D. Prabhakar Rao said on Friday that “supply will continue to be seamless to the farm sector from today as it has been since December 2018”. He allayed fears of the farming community on 24×7 free power.
Interruption in 24×7 free power supply to the farm sector in the Northern Discom areas, however, has brought down the energy consumption by about 30 million units (MU) on Thursday. The consumption has been in the range of 250 MU for the last five days with the peak load on the transmission system clocking below 13,000 megawatt.
The energy consumption recorded on Thursday was 223.35 MU, lowest since February 20 this year. Transco authorities explained that the peak load was recorded beyond 13,000 MW on 28 days since February 25, when it crossed the 13,000 MW mark for the first time this Rabi season.
They stated that the peak load has crossed 13,000 MW again on Friday after a five-day break. It was around 13,600 MW before noon.
