The decision of Food Corporation of India (FCI) against procuring parboiled rice from this rabi marketing season and the State government’s clear stand of not opening procurement centres aside, the farming community of Telangana has pinned its hopes on paddy by cultivating it in nearly 36 lakh acres.
In the process, they have also dashed the hopes of the two power distribution companies (Discoms) of considerable savings on energy supply to the farm sector which is being provided free power, round-the-clock from December 2018. They were of the hope that less consumption by the farm sector would save them power purchase costs, but it is not so.
According the authorities of power utilities, Friday (March 4) clocked the second highest intra-day peak load on the power supply system of the State till date when it recorded 13,611 megawatt (MW) load at 7.50 am. However, the energy consumption was not in that proportion as it was recorded at 268.69 million units (MU) for the day. The energy consumption was higher than that on Friday on 27 days in March and April last year.
The highest-ever intra-day peak load on the system recorded was on March 26 last year, when it clocked 13,688 MW and the highest-ever energy consumption for a day was recorded on April 3 last year, when it was recorded at 286.12 MU. Energy demand is on the rise with consumption for rabi operations, domestic and commercial needs picking up with rising temperature.
“Initially, we were expecting that farming community would go for crops alternative to paddy, mostly irrigated-dry crops which need intermittent wetting rather than flooding system followed for paddy, which needs higher energy to pump groundwater as well as lifting”, a senior executive of Northern Discom said. During the peak demand period of farm sector, its consumption would be in the range of 25% to 35% of the total demand. He stated that peak load is likely to cross the 14,000 MW barrier this month.
True to their observation, paddy was transplanted was slow initially and it was in only 2.31 lakh acres till the first week of January against nearly 5.5 lakh covered in the previous rabi season by that time. By the last week of January it reached 14 lakh acres and in the first week of February it was about 19.19 lakh acres. By mid-February, cultivation of paddy reached 31 lakh acres.
According to the Agriculture Department data, paddy is transplanted in over 35.84 lakh acres as on March 2 and it is nearly 68% of the total rabi/yasangi cultivation of 52.88 lakh acres. “Now that most of the paddy cultivated is passing through the reproductive phase – panicle initiation, booting and flowering stages – it requires intensive wetting/flooding translating into higher energy consumption for pumping and lifting water”, a senior official said.
