Power connections in 24 hours: Minister

By Our Special Correspondent

COIMBATORE, JUNE 17. The TNEB will give power connection for houses, offices and commercial establishments within 24 hours of applying for it, Mr. Arcot N. Veerasamy, Minister for Power, announced here today.

Addressing a press conference, he said this would be the first time in the country that an Electricity Board had ever launched such a programme. Getting connection used to take even months, he added.

Already The TNEB had been giving connections for industries in Chennai within a month. ``Action is initiated against officials who fail to do so''. The new scheme would be introduced in Coimbatore distribution circle, as the situation here was quite comfortable with no waiting list in the domestic applications, apart from having excellent infrastructure because of the installation of sub-stations, transformers and cables at a total cost of Rs. 70 crores.

It would be tried next in Madurai circle and would be gradually extended to the entire State by December this year. He said that the waiting list for power connections in the State was 1.5 lakhs (domestic), 1500 (industrial) and 4 lakhs (agricultural).

Even for the industrial connection, the TNEB was planning to fix a time-frame of a week from the date of application. ``This would also be first tried in Coimbatore''. However, with regard to agricultural pumpsets, it would be possible to give only 40,000 connections per annum.

The Minister said that before June 11, the State was purchasing 300 MW from other States. Now the generation had outstripped the demand. As against the demand of 5,500 MW, the State was generating 5,600 MW thanks to the hydel generation from Mettur and other stations.

Pointing out that the State was facing a growth rate of 500 MW per annum, he said he was confident that it would be able to become ``self-sufficient'' next year due to various projects coming to fruition. He listed a number of projects for which power purchase agreements (PPAs) had been signed. He was certain that Tamil Nadu would be able to generate as much as 10,000 MW by 2005.

By then, the total demand expected was 8000 MW. As Tamil Nadu would have surplus power by then, it requested the Union Minister for Power, Mr. Rangarajan Kumaramangalam, to purchase it through the Power Trading Corporation and sell it to other States. ``The Union Minister has also agreed to this''.

To a question on the proposed naphtha-based power plants, he admitted that 20 such units were planned through the TIDCO in 1997. However, the allocation of naphtha by the Central Government was sufficient only to generate 800 MW which was too low. But during the past four years, the price of naphtha had shot up four times and the generation of a unit of power could cost as much as Rs 4.30. ``Hence we have given up the proposal''.

The Minister said that with a comfortable power position in the offing, the foundation stone for an industrial park would be laid at Nanguneri tax-free zone this year itself. ``We are prepared to supply any amount of power required for the industrial units coming up there''.

To a question, Mr. Veerasamy replied the line loss in Tamil Nadu was 16.9 per cent as against 24 per cent in the northern States. ``We are trying to bring it down to 16 per cent''. Besides, strict vigil had been maintained with regard to power thefts, he added.

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