The Government on Saturday said that it was making concerted efforts to reduce scheduled and unscheduled power cuts by augmenting in a phased manner the critically overloaded Receiving Stations in the State.Replying to a Calling Attention Notice by Mubarak Gul in the Legislative Assembly, Minister of State for Power, Asiea Naqash said some Receiving Stations are critically overloaded, which necessitate unscheduled cuts at Sub-Transmission levels. “Such critically overloaded Receiving Stations are being augmented as per the load requirement on priority in a phased manner to reduce the unscheduled cuts,” she said.The Minister further informed the House that unrestricted demand (peak power) in Kashmir valley, at present, is 1900 MW of which around 1190 MW is being met while as rest is curtailed by enforcing curtailment schedule.
She said Peak Load of around 1190 MW is presently being served during morning and evening hours, when the aggregate registered load on the system comprises of predominantly domestic and essential loads having load agreements of 700 MW. “This indicates that major portion of the domestic consumers use load in excess of their agreement load” she added.
She said currently there are 45 hours per week average curtailment in metered areas and 63 hours per week curtailment in non-metered areas.Asiea informed the house that the load shedding is being regulated and disciplined with multi-level monitoring, even as the local generation in Kashmir Valley drastically reduces in winter due to decrease in water availability. She said the scheduled / unscheduled cuts are restored to provide power supply as per availability in order to maintain the grid discipline.She said in addition, system constraints at Transmission level also necessitate unscheduled cuts while efforts are always made to restrict these cuts to minimum time durations by employing rotational procedure. The Minister further informed that the scheduled cuts will get reduced considerably after new 400 KV Grid Station would be made operational in North Kashmir - which is being commissioned shortly.
She further said that consumer meters are being installed in all divisions to enforce judicious use of power, keep check on the illegal connections and excessive use of load. She added that enforcement teams/squads, already established at all levels, are conducting rigorous inspections across the length and breadth of valley to improve the enforcement.Meanwhile, while responding to another Calling Attention Notice by Legislator A R Rather, the Minster said government has sanctioned augmentation of three major Receiving Stations to improve power supply in Kokernag area. The Minister said to mitigate the problem of overloading in the area, the augmentation projects have been sanctioned for from 6.3 MVA Hiller Receiving Station, 10+6.3 MVA Kokernag Receiving Station and 6.3 MVA Dandipora Receiving Station.
She said the Government would also formulate a DPR for the augmentation of 50 MVA Grid Station, Buchoo (Lissar) to 100 MVA to further improve power scenario in the area. She said all these Receiving Stations are getting overloaded with the onset of winter as the unrestricted load demand of the consumers fed from these installations exceeds their handling capacity, owing to which additional cuts are being implemented in addition to curtailment schedule. She said during winters, consumers use power in excess of the agreement load, thereby overloading the system, particularly the 11 KV feeding lines, Receiving stations, 33 KV feeding line and in some cases Grid station also.Of these Receiving stations have been sanctioned under various Centrally Sponsored Schemes and once above two augmentations are completed, the power supply to the area shall improve significantly.