(ET)
A sudden spurt in power consumption in the state coupled with shortfall in supply of coal from Mahanadi Coalfields and Singareni Collieries has crippled power supply to many districts in the state, with power outages in many districts lasting for about five to six hours due to sudden ‘trips’ at generation plants.
Sources said that chief minister YS Jaganmohan Reddy has called up his Telangana counterpart K Chandrashekar Rao and requested him to double the coal supply from Singareni. “We are receiving just around 45,000 million metric tonnes of coal as against the requirement of 70,000 million metric tonnes, which has crippled generation,” confirmed state energy minister Balineni Srinivasa Reddy. He, however, added that power outages were expected to reduce from Sunday.
The minister also took stock of the situation with Andhra Pradesh Transmission Corporation (AP Transco) CMD N Srikanth and AP Genco MD B Sridhar on Sunday and asked them to step up their efforts to improve power generation in the state. He also directed the MD to depute a senior officer for continuous monitoring of coal procurement and power supply on a war footing and avoid power cuts and added that demand in the state has gone up due to nine hours of free electricity to the agricultural sector.
