Minister for Power Development Department, H&UDD, Dr Nirmal Singh today informed the house that augmentation work on receiving station at Sogam would be taken up during the next financial year. He said the issue has been taken up with Planning Development and Monitoring Department for arrangement of funds.The Minister said this while responding to a calling attention notice by Qaiser Jamsheed Lone moved ‘to call attention of the Government towards the issue of public importance that has arisen due to delay in up-gradation work of 33/11 KV receiving station Sogam from existing capacity 6.6 MVA to 10 MVA.’While giving details, the Minister informed that the receiving station Sogam of District Kupwara is having capacity of 1x6.3 MVA with feeders having 250 AMP peak load, Tikkipora with 230 AMP Peak load and hospital having 20 AMP peak load respectively.
The Minister informed that presently receiving station has total capacity of 330 Amp while as unrestricted load on the station of present is 500 Amps, owing to which additional rotational cuts are being implemented in addition to curtailment schedule.“If these unscheduled/distress cuts are not enforced, vital power equipments like power transformers, switchgear etcetera may get damaged thereby plunging the entire feeding area in darkness for a longer duration,” the Minister added. “In order to mitigate this problem, augmentation of receiving station Sogam from existing 6.3 MVA to 10 MVA has been approved under critically overloaded component under PMDP (Rural) for an amount of Rs. 62.08 lakh,” Dy Chief Minister added.The Deputy Chief Minister informed that a proposal for execution of 40 critically overloaded Receiving stations (including augmentation of Receiving Station Sogam) to be taken up departmentally has been framed at an estimated cost of Rs 36.89 Crore and submitted to Planning department.