Amaravati: Systems in place to tackle load-shedding

Amaravati: AP is all set to handle about 600 MW load-shedding on Sunday night in view of the Prime Minister's call to the nation to switch off lights for nine minutes from 9 pm and light lamps instead to bond the nation together against COVID-19.

The government has directed the power officials to keep in place all systems to check outages and also advise farmers to make the most of it by using the power supply around this period to switch on their agricultural pumpsets.

Apart from the advice to switch off only lights as suggested by the Prime Minister, the power officials are also advising people to use the period to switch on motors to pump water to overhead tanks instead of the regular hours that they do it and also not forget to keep on other appliances as usual.

The Central Power Distribution Company Limited (CPDCL), CRDA circle's superintendent engineer A Murali Krishna said the consumers need not worry about it as care was being taken to maintain the load properly.

SPDCL Executive Engineer B V Sudhakar said the Transco will divert the power to agriculture sector for 30 minutes to prevent the sudden decline of consumption.

He said the share of lights in the domestic power consumption was nearly 50 percent. Sudhakar said the capacitors at the sub-stations would be put-off to prevent problems to the power consumers.

Allaying fears, AP Transco authorities mentioned that measures are in place to avoid any abrupt fluctuations in the power grid. "With a considerable dip witnessed in the power consumption due to absence of commercial activity following the nationwide lockdown, Sunday's nine-minute-long exercise might invite voltage fluctuations across the district.

However, enough staff has been deployed at each sub-station to monitor as well as regulate fluctuations with immediate effect," says Y Pratap Reddy, Superintendent Engineer of AP Transco, Visakhapatnam.

Report from Rajamahendravaram too says that the authorities are taking all precautions to avoid fluctuations or outages. Transco superintending engineer Ch Satyanarayana Reddy said that state load dispatch centre was taking care about the grids in this regard and all Transco circles had sent the details to the dispatch centre.

In East Godavari district, 80 MW of power load would fall because of switching-off of the lights. Transco divisional engineers would keep a tab on the loans, Reddy said.

Central Power Distribution Company Ltd of AP, Guntur district Superintendent Engineer M Vijaya Kumar said "If power consumption will fall suddenly power grid will collapse.

In order to avoid this problem, I am requesting the farmers to use electrical motor pump sets and house owners to use motors to fill the overhead tanks with water and use ACs, fans, TVs. Generally, refrigerators will work around the clock.

Similarly, cold storage units will work 24x7 in Krishna, Guntur and Prakasam districts. In addition, assistant engineers have been asked to be on duty at the sub-stations.

AP Southern Power Distribution Company Limited (SPDCL) Superintendent Engineer Chalapathi maintained that the department is technically sound to cope with fluctuations in load and asked people not to worry about the same.