Relief for industries as AP drops power cut plans

Vijayawada: In a big respite to industrial consumers, Andhra Pradesh Government has decided not to implement restriction and control (R&C) order notified by APERC on a plea by the Discoms with effect from September 5 to 15.

Following a review at a meeting, the decision was taken by Transco CMD and Special Chief Secretary, Energy K Vijayanand. The grid situation has improved following rains. He said the APERC order was issued on September 2 and clarified that there will not be any restriction on power supply for the industries including the one-day holiday declared a week.

The decision was preceded by apprehensions expressed by the representatives of the trade bodies and entrepreneurs from various sectors over loss of production and clientele due to once a week power holiday and restrictions declared on power supply. The Discoms in their plea to the APERC had stated that they are unable to meet the demand due to short-supply and procuring power from external agencies has become very expensive.

Vijayanand said the power supply position has improved following incessant rains. Hence, there will not be any load-shedding, he said. The senior official said a total of 206.5 million units of power was supplied across the State on Sunday.

Due to load on the grid, power supply to the industries was slightly reduced on September 1 to ensure promised supply of power to the priority sectors like agriculture and domestic consumers. Officials said the Discoms approached the APERC for load shedding due to the prevailing situation at that time.

Meanwhile, following an emergency review meeting, the Discoms have decided to approach APERC with a supplementary request to withdraw the decision on imposition of restrictions on power supply to the industrial consumers.

The decision to withdraw the curbs on power supply has brought cheers among the industrial and trade bodies saying in future also such orders should not be issued. They said in case of shortage, proper planning should be done to tie up with outside agencies to buy surplus power from them.

Earlier, the Discoms informed APERC that during peak load hours from 18:00 hrs to the next day 7:00 hrs, the discovered prices in the markets were around Rs10 per unit and even power was not available at below Rs15 per unit in the high-power DAM market segment.

AP Discoms had stated that they have made every best possible effort to maintain the power supply situation with no hiccups till the month of August 2023. But going by lesser supply availability and soaring grid demand in the month of September 2023 as well, Discoms were left with no other option except to impose certain R&C measures during the period from September 2 to September 15, 2023, on the industrial consumers to release a flat load of around 700MW across the State on round the clock basis.

“We thank the government for its decision not to implement R&C measures for the industries including IT and ITeS units,” Sreedhar Kosaraju, Chairman, DeepTech Naipunya Foundation, told Bizz Buzz on Tuesday.