VIJAYAWADA: Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu has directed the officials of Energy department to submit a comprehensive action plan for meeting the power demand, which is set to see a significant increase with spike in industrial consumption, for the next 15 years. The department will make a presentation to the CM on November 16 on improving the operational and financial performances of the power utilities.
After unveiling the statue of Bharat Ratna Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya, installed at Vidyut Soudha on Wednesday, Chairperson and Managing Director (CMD) of APTRANSCO and Managing Director (MD) of APGENCO, K Vijayanand, said, “Predicting that there will be a huge demand for electricity in view of Amaravati’s construction, rapid industrialisation and economic development in the State, the Chief Minister asked power utilities to focus on enhancing the generation, transmission, and distribution capacities, and achieve global standards. He also directed them to submit an action plan on the anticipated power demand.”
He further observed that AP Discoms were meeting a demand of around 180 Million Units (MUs) per day, with a growth of 10 per cent over the last year. “The maximum grid demand registered so far is 9,500 MW. The grid consumption is likely to grow up to 200 MU per day and the maximum demand would be around 10,200 MW in the next summer,” Vijayanand said.
As part of the objective to reduce transmission and distribution losses, Vijayanand said the APTRANSCO is going to establish 100 per cent 400 KV network across the 13 districts with an estimated investment of over Rs 1,000 crore.
“This year, 400 MW solar generation was added at Galividu. Another 400 MW solar power unit will be added to the generation by APGenco at Talaricheruvu by the end of this month. With this, the total installed renewable energy capacity in the State will increase to 6,950 MW,” he added.