Transco making efforts to meet Delhi's power needs

New Delhi, Apr 27 (UNI) Allaying concerns of massive power cuts in the capital during the coming Summer season, sources in the Delhi Transco today said efforts were on to meet the power demands of the city, including getting back in operation many central sector plants which remained non-functional over the past few months.

''We are hopeful of soon getting back to action several central sector plants like the Dadri and the the Nathpa Jhakri units. The annual maintainence work on these units, which have witnessed frequent breakdowns over the last 10 months, will soon be over and hence we hope to get them back to operation,''the sources said.

Further, with the Central Electricity authority asking all the nine states which draw power from the Northern Grid, not to overdraw, supply from the grid could soon be back to normal.

CEA chairman Rakesh Nath has asked all the nine states to stop overdrawals by 1000 Hours on May 1. This would mean, that when the frequency is low and some state tries to overdraw, their supply would be automatically cut off.

Infact, excessive overdrawals by the states drawing power from the northern grid had pushed the grid to brink of collapse resulting in acute shortage of power in the grid. Energy experts say the stoppage of overdrawals by states could save the grid from collapsing, ensuring regular supply to Delhi from it.

Among other efforts by Delhi Transco to meet power demands of the city are use of energy efficient devices (which would reduce the power requirement), adopting of energy conservation measures like use of CFL lamps, LED lights for traffic signals and other areas, switching off lights in un-occupied areas etc.

In a major step to meet the ever-increasing power demands of the city, Power Purchase Agreements to make an additional 1000 MW of power available to the capital in the next three years were recently signed by the Delhi transco Ltd with the Tehri Hydro Development Corp and the National Thermal Power Corp.

As per the agreements, 1031 MW additional power would be available to Delhi from five different power stations belonging to Tehri and NTPC by the year 2009.

Out of the 1031 MW power to be sourced from the THDC and NTPC, about 130 MW would be available within the next two to three months - 100 MW from Tehri and 24 MW from NTPC's Unchahar power project.

Meanwhile the city experienced a peak demand of 2980 MW today with no load shedding during the peak hours. Overall, 288 MW of load shedding was done.

UNI AR MP GC2010