The Bangalore Electricity Supply Company (BESCOM) has decided to postpone the plan to start scheduled power cuts by a week.
Owing to a shortage of 150-500 MW of power supply, the power cuts were planned.
On Thursday, BESCOM had informed industries to give them 48 hours to prepare for close to six hours’ power cut.
The decision to go ahead with the power cut was put on hold as the state saw sporadic rains.
“The power situation has improved. We will take a call on the decision next week. It will be three hours or as approved by the KERC,” said P Manivannan, MD, BESCOM.
BESCOM will have to approach the KERC again before getting the ‘go ahead’ for load shedding.
The move had drawn criticism from various trade bodies who had appealed to the state government to develop power projects on a fast track basis.
M Lakshminarayan, president, BCIC, said, “This unscheduled power cut will cause severe hardship to industries which are struggling due to sluggish economy.
These power curtailments will not only affect the output of the industries, but also erode tight margins of the industry due to usage of captive power generation with diesel or heavy furnace oil, which is two to three times more expensive than grid power.” According to KPTCL the total generation on Thursday from hydel power stations was 12.
168 million units as compared to 46.439 million units last year.
