In the wake of the ongoing power crisis in the state, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Monday directed officials to ensure power supply as per the roster in all 75 districts and to map out road routes to speed up coal transport to
thermal plants.
After several thermal plants in the state recently reported outages, the chief minister called a review meeting to discuss the power situation in the state and said that was a need for wide-scale reforms in the power sector.
Adityanath also directed officials to draft an extensive plan to ramp up the state’s power sector and meet the increasing demand for electricity.
He also asked state energy minister Arvind Kumar Sharma to review the working of the power department and bring about major changes at all levels.
As parts of the state reel under a heatwave and temperature levels rise, Uttar Pradesh has clocked a spike in demand for power – up to 21,000 mw per day against a supply of 19,000mw-20,000 mw per day.
Following the demand-supply mismatch, long power cuts were witnessed across the state and Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Limited (UPPCL) decided to arrange for additional power from different sources to meet the gap.
On Monday, Uttar Pradesh reported a shortage of about 1200 mw during the off-peak hours, department officials said. “The demand for power in the state touched 2,1974 mw during the day and the shortage during the period was about 170 mw only. For a state like Haryana, the shortage was much higher during the same time period,” said a source.
“Even today, the average power cut in villages is around four hours. The department seems to be banking more on changes in the weather for the reduced demand. It is all wait and watch for now. Even today, the shortage was around 1,000 mw,” said Awadesh Verma, chairman of the Uttar Pradesh Power Consumer Forum.
Later during the day, Sharma also held a review meeting and instructed officials to also focus on reducing line losses. “During the meeting, it was informed that the state was successfully able to arrange about 1,686 mw of additional power between midnight and 5am on Monday and about 838 mw of the power was purchased through competitive bidding,” said an official.
Uttar Pradesh has an installed thermal power generation capacity of 6,129 mw that is managed by the state. Of this, an outage of about 1100 mw was reported on Sunday which included a 660-mw outage at Harduaganj Thermal Power Station. The other two state-run thermal power stations that had reported an outage on Sunday were Obra Thermal power station (294 mw) and Pariccha thermal power station (220 mw). However, power department officials said that following the government’s efforts, they were able to make the 660-mw power unit at Harduaganj operational, thereby reducing the shortage.