VIJAYAWADA: Andhra Pradesh is all set to have total 100 percent power connectivity on domestic consumer front by March 31 and measures have been taken up in that direction, energy secretary Ajay Jain said.
Speaking to mediapersons here on Thursday, on the sidelines of the national-level stakeholders meet on upscaling of AgDSM programme, organised in association with the State Energy Conservation Mission, Ajay Jain said 4.3 lakh new household power connections are being given soon to make AP the state with 100 percent household power connectivity.
Besides achieving cent per cent power connectivity, the state also wants to be energy efficient.
As part of that, the conventional bulbs under the Domestic Efficient Lighting Programme (DELP) are being replaced with LED bulbs. Till date, 1.63 crore conventional bulbs have been replaced, as against the 5.4 crore bulbs in the entire country.
The distribution of LED bulbs under DELP has been completed in five of the 13 districts and in the rest it is expected to be completed by end of February. “However, at some places, there are people, who were not covered under the programme. Measures have been taken to cover such people also and ensure the total state is covered under scheme by March 31” Ajay Jain said. With large-scale production of LED bulbs, the price in the open market to have come down to Rs 64 per bulb (9 watts) from around Rs 265 a few months ago.
In view of the complaint that some LED bulbs were not working, EESL, which is distributing those bulbs is setting up replacement centres. A total 175 such centres, one each for an assembly constituency, will be set up in the state.
Replacement of conventional street lights with LED ones will effectively bring down the energy consumption in the urban areas of the state. Till date, out of 5.49 lakh street lights in the state, 2.85 lakh have been replaced. Energy department plans to replace all the street lights in 110 municipalities in the state by June 30.
In the rural areas, agriculture pumpsets consume more energy than any other devise. Hence the government had decided to replace them with energy conservation pumpsets.
A pilot project of 2,000 such pump sets was successfully implemented in East Godavari and now the plan is to replicate it in the entire state. “We want to have all the 15 lakh pump sets in the state to be replaced by the energy efficient ones in next 3-4 years. Central Government had agreed to sanction Rs 5000 crore over a period of three years. In 2016-17, some 4-5 lakh pumpsets will be replaced with new ones and the replacement will be completely free,” he explained.
Each pumpset will cost Rs 50,000 and it will be given free of cost to the farmers. Ajay Jain said another important measure that is being taken up is distribution of energy efficient fans to further reduce power consumption in the households. As a pilot project, it will be implemented in Narasapuram division of West Godavari district from March1. The cost of the fan will be Rs 950 as against the market price of Rs 1,600. Two such fans will be distributed to every household. According to the energy secretary, the total energy saved by such measures was 24.1 percent or 11,408 million units. In terms of money, the value of energy saves stands at Rs 6,137 crore.
Enhancing Power Production with Help of Solar, Wind Power Projects
As the Central Government is planning to add another 175 giga watts of power production to the existing capacity by 2022, Andhra Pradesh has set itself a target of 18 GW, that is 18000 mw. Of those 18,000 megawatts, 800 mw each will be produced by solar and wind power projects. During recent CII Partnership Summit, MoUs worth Rs 5000 crore in power production sector were signed. By April, 2016, solar park in Rayalaseema with a power production capacity of 350 mw will go online and another 21 projects with total production capacity of 619 mw will also go online by April. Further, efforts are being made to reduce transmission and distribution losses, energy secretary Ajay Jain said.