HYDERABAD: If what is said is to be believed, Telangana state will be self- sufficient in energy consumption by the next five years and the state would have an installed capacity of about 20,000 megawatts (MW) by 2019.
Speaking at the ‘Energy efficiency summit 2015’ organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) here on Friday, Arvind Kumar, secretary, Industries & Commerce and Energy Department, said “From a base of about 4,350 MW of thermal power we will be adding another 3,000 MW this year. Of which 600 MW is getting commissioned this month and the remaining by the end of the year. In the coming four years, another 14,000 MW has also been planned. By the end of 2018-19 we will be having about 20,000 MW of energy and this will take care of increasing requirement of the industry,” he said.
Explaining about the government targets in solar energy, he said the state’s target is to achieve 5,000 MW target of solar projects in the next five years, of which 500 MW is finalised in March and 2,000 MW is in the process of finalising. “The rates are starting at as low as 5.17 per unit. We are doing it in a very decentralised manner to see that proximity of generation is very close to the load centre so that the transmission losses are minimized,” he said.
“We have kept district-wise sealing to ensure that solar power goes exactly to the place where it has to go,” he added.
Arvind said the main challenge in supplying solar power for agriculture is that the load will be increased by four as the power needs to be transmitted only during day time.
He said the Telangana state is among the top four states which are having lowest transmission and distribution (T&D) losses. “As of now, the state’s transmission and distribution losses are around 15-16 pc. As the energy efficiency lies in reducing T&D losses, our aim is to bring it down to 12 per cent in the next four years.”