Krishnapatnam plant to go full steam soon; power relief expected

NELLORE: In an attempt to provide relief from severe power shortage, APGenco has stepped up generation at its newly launched thermal power station at Krishnapatnam in the district.
The first unit of Damodaram Sanjeevaiah Thermal Power Plant (DSTPP) is expected to produce about 400 mw of power in a couple of weeks. The plant was already synchronized with the state grid and the officials slowly increasing the generation from the 400-mw capacity first unit.
While the unit was launched with production of around 20 mw two months ago, the generation reached 150 mw last week and officials pushing up the generation levels to peak point of 400 mw.
Sources said first unit would be ready for generation of 400 mw in a fortnight as all the supply lines and transmission lines have also been put in place.
DSTPP was designed to produce 1600 mw, the first ultra mega power plant in the public sector. The capacity addition of 400 mw is expected to provide big relief to both states of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, reeling under severe power cuts.
The APGenco managing director Vijayanand is closely monitoring the plant works with the field officials and set October deadline for generation of 800mw. Genco officials were expecting to put the entire plant on full load generation of 1600 mw by December.
“With Khariff season fast approaching, the power woes in both the states are bound to go up as consumption from agriculture sector would be resumed,” said K S Rao, senior official of SPDCL.
AP alone is facing a shortage of nearly 1500 mw despite there was no consumption from the agriculture sector. Although, agriculture pump sets in AP are less in number, the new government headed by Chandrababu Naidu has directed all the Discoms to remove the cap on release of agriculture pump set connections in all the 13 districts and provide immediate connections to farmers on demand.
The addition of new connections would surely push the demand, increasing the gap between the generation and supply. Keeping all these facts in mind, APGenco is gearing up to add capacity to the state grid to lessen the shortage.
As per the quota fixed by the Centre, AP is entitled to draw 46.11% from the total generation in two states. Against the peak demand of 142 million units, AP could supply just 124 mu with a shortfall of 17 mu.