Srinagar, 7 Dec: In a bid to reduce the curtailment hours, the Kashmir Power Distribution Corporation Limited (KPDCL) Tuesday said it is supplying additional 200 Megawatts (MWs) of electricity compared to last year.
Managing Director KPDCL, Dr Basharat Qayoom speaking to the Rising Kashmir said that this year Corporation has augmented around 200 MWs of energy while the department also touched the peak load of 1720 MW in the month of November, higher than the last year’s peak stats in the month of November in 2020.
According to the officials, peak demand in November is around 2800 MWs against the agreement load of 800 MWs which further goes up in December. Corporation supplies more than twice the agreement load and is incurring AT&C losses of around 70%.
“AT&C losses of Discoms are very high due to pilferage, theft and non-payment of bills”, said MD KPDCL adding that if losses on feeders come down by judicious use and timely bill payments; hours of supply would certainly go up. “As on date there is not a single feeder out of 1024 where losses are less than 20%, this is a grave situation”.
Qayoom, however said, the department aims to provide the electricity to the consumers with lesser curtailments if there is judicious use of electricity.
“We can give more hours of supply, but unrestricted demand increases due to non-judicious use, theft or pilferage”, he said.
According to official figures, Kashmir in the year 2021 has so far recorded around 8 percent of increase in the energy consumption if compared with the last year. “In the current year 66,747 lakh units of electricity has been consumed, while in the year 2020 energy consumption was around 61,709 lakh units”.
The officials further said that after the augmentation programme more than 200 feeders were upgraded where supply hours have been increased upto 6 hours, ranging from one hour to six hours.
“There are a sufficient number of Distribution Transformers, poles or conductors available in buffers across divisions in the valley to meet the emergencies. However, we urge consumers to make judicious use of electricity which can enable longer hours of electricity supply,” Dr. Qayoom added.
Earlier directions were passed by the LG led administration to the officers to undertake greater efforts to ensure a smooth power supply by formulating proper protocol to manage scheduled power cuts.
The department was directed to initiate the IEC campaign for raising awareness on agreement power load, schedule of electricity cuts, and helpline number for complaints.
Union Minister for Power and New and Renewable Energy R K Singh who was in J&K for two day during the Central Government’s Public Outreach Initiative had said that the government is committed to improve the power scenario of UT as the development of the place is high on the agenda of the Prime Minister.