Electricity demand increases in northern region

Chandigarh, Jan 7 (UNI) There has been an overall increase in the demand of electricity in the entire northern region and agriculture sector due to failure of rains during the winter season, an officer spokesman said here today.

The Haryana Power Utilities said on an average, the Power Utilities had supplied about 625 to 630 lakh units of electricity per day during the first week of January, which is 12 per cent more as compared to the corresponding period of the last year.

He said, earlier about 610 lakh units of electricity per day were supplied during the month of December, 2006 as compared to 545 lakh units during December, 2005, which was again 12 per cent extra. The Power Utilities had been supplying 310 lakh units of electricity to the agriculture sector these days, he added.

He said there was an outage of 3000 MW of powers in the northern grid. The reduced inflows at hydro power generating stations had also resulted into less availability of power. In view of this situation scheduled power regulations had been imposed on industries from 6 to 7 hours daily on staggered basis. Similarly, about four hours scheduled regulations had been imposed on urban consumers.

The spokesman said the power generating units of Haryana Power Generation Corporation Limited were generating power to their full capacity to cater to the requirements of the state. These units had been generating 300 lakh units of electricity daily against the expected generation of 270 lakh units per day.

He appealed to the consumers to bear with the situation as the power regulations were temporary ones which would be withdrawn as soon as the system parameters improved.

UNI