Additional 3-phase power to IP sets

Energy Minister D K Shivakumar on Thursday told the Legislative Council that the State government has decided to provide additional one-hour of three phase power to farmers from Thursday. 

At present, six hours of three phase power is supplied to irrigation pump sets (IP sets) of farmers. However, the same is not assured to farmers in villages.

Replying to a query by Allamprabhu Patil (Congress), Shivakumar said that despite the 15 per cent gap between the demand and supply of power, the State government has decided to supply additional power to the IP sets.

“We are facing a shortage of 1,700 MW this month. The shortage is bound to increase during summer. Despite this, we would like to announce in this Council that from today (Thursday), farmers will get an additional one hour of three phase power,” he said.
When the members of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) demanded that the power should be supplied during the day time, the minister agreed upon it but added that the local Electricity Supply Companies (escoms) will modify the distribution according to the situation and availability.

Explaining the steps taken to meet power demand in the State, he said the government has taken both short term and long term measures.

“The department will continue power purchase agreement till June 2015. Total 1,500 MW has been purchased, in which 450 mw was purchased from generators within the State and the remaining 1,050 megawatt from outside,” he informed.

Replying to another question by JD-S member Ramakrishna, the minister said he has instructed the officials to double the procurement of transformers and set up a transformer bank. “Some of the transformers are overloaded and we want to ensure quality and uninterrupted power. Therefore we have taken decision to increase the number of transformers,” he said.

Shivakumar also said 23 districts in the State have been brought under “Nirantara Jyothi” scheme to provide uninterrupted power to households of BPL families. The scheme will be extended to remaining districts in a phased manner, he added.