Two hour power cut in Hyderabad from today

                                                       
HYDERABAD: With the power demand crossing 13,000 MW on Wednesday, Discoms have decided to increase the duration of the daily power cuts across the state with immediate effect. The Greater Hyderabad region will from Thursday witness a two-hour power cut as against the one-hour one that was unofficially imposed on the region two days ago.


The power supply situation further deteriorated in all towns and municipalities with Discoms deciding to go ahead with three-spell power cuts during the day time. Despite a capacity addition of 5,311 MW in the state during the last 7 years, there is still power deficit. This is mainly due to reduced gas production in KG basin. The nine gas-based projects with installed capacity of 2,772 MW are currently generating only around 1,500 MW. There is an idle capacity of around 1,272 MW due to reduced gas supply. Had the gas supply been maintained as per the agreement, the state would have seen a surplus of power rather than the crisis it is experiencing now.

With no inflows during the last four months, the water level in the major reservoirs have already hit the dead storage level," said sources in APGenco. The lack of transmission lines from the southern grid is also proving critical to all the four southern states. While Tamil Nadu is experiencing a shortage of more than 3,000 MW per day, AP saw a shortfall of 1890 MW on Wednesday.

All villages which are experiencing 8-hour power cut till date will have 12-hour power cut hereafter. All mandal headquarters will have 8-hour power cut from Thursday and all towns and district headquarters will have 6-hour power cut in three spells.

"If power cut is imposed on urban areas, it would give more relief to the system as one hour of power cut in the cities including Hyderabad is equal to four hours of power cut in rural areas," pointed an official in APTransco.

The hydel generation has been hit due to poor inflows into Srisailam and Nagarjunasagar reservoirs. The total water availability in major reservoirs is 90 TMC as against 341 TMC last year, thereby resulting in a deficit of around 1,195 million units of hydel power generation. During the strike in Singareni Collieries as part of the Telangana agitation in September and October last year, an additional 72 TMC of water was used in Srisailam and 11 TMC of water in Sileru to maintain power supply during the strike period. "We are feeling the consequences now as there is no water to meet the peak demand requirement.