State govt moots strategic energy conservation plan

The energy department of the Andhra Pradesh government has decided to involve all stakeholders in the implementation process of energy conservation initiatives of power utilities. With this, the state government is expected to achieve not only reduction in electricity wastage considerably, but also will be able to tackle the every-growing peak-hour power demand in the state.

The government is going to finalise the action plan on energy conservation and energy efficiency soon in order to face the unprecedented demand to some extent and to put efforts to supply reliable and quality power to the consumers of the state, the state energy coordination cell said in a release on Sunday.

The Centre had suggested all states to fully gear up to implement energy conservation measures to bridge the gap between demand and supply to some extent as it is a big challenge for the power utilities in the next five years to meet the ever-increasing demand in various sectors like industry, commercial, transport, domestic and agriculture.

The state government had achieved an installed capacity of 15,768 mW as against 14,750 mW last year. During 2000-2001, the installed capacity of the state was just 7,974 mW. It is estimated that the demand-supply gap over the next three years will be abnormally high with an average power deficit of 3,245 mW by that time.

Recently, the state has  procured power at a cost of Rs 6-10 per unit to meet the demand and supplied power to industries at just Rs 4.07 on an average. The government is looking at achieving the task of saving 20 per cent of power in all sectors. The prominent sectors where conservation is feasible through effective measures are Industry (7 per cent), agriculture (4.5 per cent), domestic (6 per cent) and other sectors (2.5 per cent), the release added.