Transco buys power from exchanges

Hyderabad: In order to meet the demand for power in the State, the Transmission Corporation (Transco) bought about 1,500 mw from the power exchanges on Saturday and purchased about 1,200 mw on Sunday.

As there is negligible power generation in the hydro power stations in the State, the Transco would be forced to continue to purchase power from the exchanges for the next one month.

The demand for power is hovering around 8,400 mw per day. While the energy consumption is about 180 mu per day which includes 90 mu usage by the agriculture sector per day.

Even two months after the beginning of monsoon, the hydro power stations, which have a capacity to produce about 2,350 mw, could supply only about 5 mu per day.

The power utilities are using the hydro power sparingly. Officials are hoping for more rains in October so that the hydro stations could generate more power.

The price of power in the exchanges is Rs 3.50 per unit and the cost of purchase per day is about Rs 12 crore. Transco has bought about 300 mw in the same period last year and the present purchases are about 4 times more than that.
Hydro power would have been cheaper and should have brought down the expenditure on power purchase considerably as it is available at a cost of Rs 1.20 per unit.

However, due to scanty rains, the hydro power stations are able to produce only about 5 mu per day which is of little use to power utilities.

Even if the hydro station function at least half of their capacity, the purchases from the exchanges would have been half and the power utilities would have been able to meet the demand for the agriculture sector.

As dry spell is continuing in the State, the farmers are using the bore wells continuously, thus leading to heavy demand. The domestic sector is also using power heavily with sultry weather conditions.

By NM Satheesh