No extra power, outages likely

CHANDIGARH: The failure of the UT administration to secure approval to buy electricity on short-term agreement and the rise in the demand (309MW on Friday) were set to worsen the power situation with the electricity department considering to impose rotational power cuts soon.
The numbers of complaints related to electricity have shot up to 150 to 200 written and 300 to 400 verbal ones daily.
For this year, the peak demand was expected to reach 395MW, while Chandigarh, from its regular sources and short-term (Jammu and Kashmir), was getting only 250MW. The rest is being bought on daily basis from power exchange.
An electricity department official said, "At present, we get 220MW from regular sources, 30MW from Jammu and Kashmir, 55MW we buy from power exchange and 3MW is the over drawl."
The department gets 220MW of power from its permanent sources throughout the year 47% from Mohali (PSPCL), 5% from Dhulkote (BBMB) and the remaining from Nalagarh.
Every year to overcome this gap in demand and supply, the department buys extra power on short term basis from different sources. This year it was looking forward to get approval from the ministry to buy another 20MW to 50MWfrom National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) which was turned down.
The department could only get into agreement with Jammu and Kashmir that is supplying 30MW of electricity to Chandigarh from May 1 and will continue to do so till August.
Since the UT does not have a power generation plant, the department purchases power from different power generation plants and if the department would face shortage in summers then imposing power cuts would be the only option. Last year as well the electricity department had got approval from the Joint Electricity Regulatory Commission to impose rotational power cuts.