Pondy CM seeks more electricity from Centre

By Our Staff Reporter

PONDICHERRY, JULY 10. The Chief Minister of Pondicherry, Mr. P. Shanmugham, who is also in charge of Electricity, has urged the Union Power Ministry to allocate extra 25 megawatt power from the unallocated power of Central generating stations in southern region to overcome the present shortage in energy and also to avoid load shedding during peak hours in the evening in the Union Territory.

Participating in the Southern States Power Ministers conference held in Bangalore today, Mr. Shanmugham said that like other States in the Southern region, Pondicherry ``is also facing power shortage due to the phenomenal load growth in the recent past'' and the Pondicherry Administration had already made a request to the Centre. He renewed Pondicherry's demand at the conference now.

(Copies of the Chief Minister's address were distributed to mediapersons by the government here today).

Pondicherry had established the record of having the lowest level of transmission and distribution losses (13.46 per cent) in the country and efforts were under way to bring down the losses still further. For the improvement of voltage profile in the southern grid, the systems study group of Southern Regional Electricity Boards had recommended last year addition of 19 capacitors to the Pondicherry system in stages.

The Chief Minister told the conference that the necessary scheme had been prepared which would involve an investment of Rs. 5 crores to achieve improvement in the voltage profile. Paucity of funds had, however, stood in the Administration's way to implement the scheme during this financial year.

He said that after meeting the needs of other priority sectors, the Administration could allocate only 6.84 per cent of the plan allocation for the power sector during this financial year. This is not sufficient to carry out the targeted programmes, he said, and requested the Union Power Minister to recommend to the Planning Commission an additional outlay to implement the scheme to instal the capacitors and other transmission programmes to meet the future load growth.

Pondicherry is drawing power from the Neyveli Lignite Corporation through the direct 230 kV line in radial mode. Therefore, the drawal by Pondicherry Union Territory did not affect southern system parameters such as frequency and voltage level in any significant manner.

The Union Territory`s drawal is only three per cent of power trading in the southern region which did not have any major impact on the grid. Still, the Union Territory was always cooperating with the Southern Regional Load Despatch Centre in maintaining load flows within the Union Territory.

The power requirements of Union Territory were being taken care of by the Central Government by allocation of power from the Central generating stations in the southern region. Mr. Shanmugham thanked the Centre for this arrangement. The total allocation came to 167 megawatt including the unallocated share of 25 megawatt.

The Pondicherry Administration had set up for the first time a power plant on its own with a capacity of 32.5 megawatt in Karaikal. This gas-based power station installed by the Pondicherry Power Corporation Limited commenced commercial operation on January 3 last.

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