WB to become power surplus State by 2007

Bangalore, Dec 7: West Bengal will become a power surplus State by December 2007, with projects nearing completion to produce 2,470 MW of power, West Bengal State Electricity Board Chairman M K De said today.

In a chat with newspersons on the sidelines of the two-day national seminar on 'Power Cable Technology', organised by the Central Power Research Institute here, he said that starting from March 2007, the State would be adding 1,570 MW of power by increasing thermal generating capacity and putting up Pump Storage Project, basically used when the demand was low to pump water up and in the evening when the demand was more the same water would be released to generate power. The power utilised for pumping would be 1,100 MW, while it would generate 900 MW of power.

Mr De said four stations of 225 MW each would be installed from March and by December 2007 the State would have a surplus of over 1,000 MW of power both during peak hours as well as off season.

To a question, he said the State was now facing 2,000 MW to 3,000 MW shortage during peak hours. Overall, the total demand of the State was 4,800 MW.

Earlier, delivering the inaugural address at the seminar, Mr De said the country was incurring high transmission and distribution loss, accounting for 0.8 per cent of the GDP. The loss was estimated at Rs 25,000 crore per year due to poor T and D. He stressed the need for curbing distribution loss and arresting power theft.

Calling for developing high quality and low cost cables, he said the cable available now was exorbitantly priced and of poor quality.

In all, 125 delegates were participating in the seminar, in which 32 papers would be presented by delegates from India and abroad.

UNI