Power situation to improve by end of this week: Bardoloi

Guwahati, May 8 (UNI) Asom power minister Pradyut Bardoloi today said the precarious power situation in the state would improve to 'near normal' by the end of this week.

The minister said the power supply from hydel power generating units in the region was likely to improve this week. The present crisis was basically due to shutting down of the 200 MW Kopili hydel power project and 50 MW Khandong hydro power project of the North Eastern Electric Power Corporation (NEEPCO) for annual maintenance work, he stated.

The minister said the Asom government was caught off guard by the shutdown of NEEPCO projects and said the central sector power corporation should have let the Asom government know about the shutdown schedule in advance.

''We should learn a lesson from such power crisis that is basically a result of over dependency on hydel power. The hydro power projects in the region generate much below the installed capacity every winter and the power supply position deterioates in the state,'' he said.

The minister further gave details about a perspective plan prepared by the Asom government to increase the state's power generation by setting up a few thermal power projects, including some in joint ventures.

He said the Asom State Electricity Board (ASEB) must perform and reduce its very high transmission and distribution loss and should not bank only on hiking the power tariff to improve its finances. He informed that the ASEB used to incur loss of about Rs 20 crore every month because of 45 per cent transmission and distribution loss.

He hoped that tangible benefit of the present efforts to improve the transmission and distribution (T&D) network would percolate down to the people from 2008.

He informed that the ASEB's 40-year-old T&D network was incapable of carrying more that 550 MW of power while the peak hour demand in the state was now about 800 MW. He said massive investment was being made due to Asian Development Bank (ADB) loan to improve the T and D network. Over 80 new sub-stations were being set up while capacity of 67 existing ones would be improved. 12000 new transformers were being set up besides setting up 1.5 lakh electronic metres in consumers' households.

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