Power Woes
Kashmir needs 1700 MWs of power to overcome unscheduled cuts
Officials say KPDCL gets less than 1500 MW of power
Riyaz Bhat
Srinagar, Dec 03 (KNO): There is a huge gap of nearly 200 MWs to overcome the unscheduled power and distress cuts in Kashmir as at present less than 1500 MWs are available against a total requirement of 1700 MWs.
Top officials in the Power Development Department (PDD) told news agency—Kashmir News Observer (KNO) that the local DISCOM in Kashmir valley was not getting the same amount of power in which the consumers could not face distress cuts and unscheduled power cuts.
“Right now, we require at least 1700 Megawatts to provide distress free power to our consumers as per the load curtailment schedule so that there are no unscheduled power cuts,” the official said.
He said, “Right now KPDCL is getting less than 1500 MW of power. However, the concerned authorities are saying that the DISCOM was getting 1500 MW.”
“KPDCL is capable of supplying and providing 2200 MWs of power. There is no issue of carrying capacity. The issue is all about the availability of power,” he said.
About the power generation from the power plants of Kashmir region, the official said, “We are generating only 50-60 MWs of power. The local power generation has really gone down.”
Earlier, in November KNO reported that in Jammu and Kashmir, the power generation from the state pool has reduced by nearly 80 percent.
A top official of the Power Development Department had said that there was a high demand of power from the second week of November.
“As of now we are only able to generate a total of 200-260 Megawatts of power from the UT pool,” the official had said.
About the power curtailment in Kashmir region, the official had said, “In urban areas there is a power curtailment of over 6 hours and over eight hours of power curtailment in rural areas.”
In the meantime, PDD is likely to announce a new power curtailment schedule in the coming days in view of a dip in power generation—(KNO)
