Vijayawada: Lockdown causes steep fall in power price

Vijayawada: As power consumption is declining in the country due to Covid-19 lockdown and power is available at low price, the State government is taking significant steps to reduce unwanted expenditure in power generation, make cost effective power purchases, strengthen power utilities and supply 24x7 uninterrupted power to consumers. In view of the Assembly session, the energy department has presented a report to the government on power generation, power purchases and other details.

Secretary, Energy department Srikant Nagulapalli said that the country has witnessed steep fall in electricity demand, which resulted in higher availability of generating resources, prompting the power prices to plummet considerably. In this scenario, Andhra Pradesh DISCOMs took maximum benefit of low market power prices in the power exchanges. Further, to use this low cost power opportunity, DISCOMs have aimed at SLDC to optimize the schedules by following merit order despatch, the secretary said.

Following the directions of Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, now the utilities are purchasing power even at an average price of Rs 1.63 to Rs 2.80 per unit. This can be seen as a crucial step of State government towards achieving cost effective power in the State. The utilities have saved around Rs 700 crore in power purchases so far. The energy department is trying to strengthen the AP Genco.

Because of the decisive steps taken by the government, almost half of expenditure incurred by AP Genco for transportation of washed and raw coal was reduced successfully. The cost of coal transportation to Rayalaseema Thermal Power Plant (RTPP) has been reduced to Rs 1027 per Metric Ton (MT) in 2019-20 against the cost of Rs 1824 per MT in 2014-15. Similarly, the cost is now brought to Rs 1010 only to supply coal to SDSTPS against Rs 1922 per MT in 2014-15. The AP Genco saved around Rs 190 crore in coal transportation in recent months by adopting 'reverse tendering' as per the directions of government.

The APTRANSCO & AP Discoms were able to reduce the total Aggregate Technical & Commercial (AT&C) losses to 13.36 per cent in 2019-20, which was at 16.36 per cent in 2018-19. From December 2019 onwards coal stocks have been increased at the stockyards, due to continuous efforts of APGENCO and at present the coal stocks reached maximum level. The Genco is also stockpiling sufficient coal stocks to meet the requirements. The present stocks at APGENCO /APPDCL power plants as on June, 08, 2020 are as follows: Dr NTTPS : 4,63,110 MT, RTPP : 4,68,620 MT, SDSTPS : 6,28,030 MT (total 4.70 lakh MT of washed coal + 1.58 Lakh MT of imported coal).