Energy Secretary N. Srikant has said providing free power supply to agriculture for nine hours during day time and reducing the burgeoning cost of power purchases are the top priorities of his department.
Unfurling the national flag on the occasion of the 73rd Republic Day at Vidyut Soudha here on Wednesday, Mr. Srikant said, out of the approved total power purchase cost of ₹.31,346 crore last year, the DISCOMs had saved ₹4,925 crore by substituting the costly thermal power with power bought from the markets at relatively lesser rates.
Of this, the AP Electricity Regulatory Commission took into account ₹.3,375 crore and approved a ‘true down’ to that extent from the retail supply tariff order for FY 2021-22.
“An amount of ₹1,552 crore is still to be reckoned as true-down. This shows the government’s commitment to reduce the burden on consumers,” he observed.
Mr. Srikant further said there were about 18.50 lakh agricultural connections in the State being supplied free power through 6,663 feeders. The government was providing a subsidy of ₹7,715 crore towards that scheme annually.
Solar power
He also said a total of 7,000 MW of solar power would be procured from 2024 in separate lots from the Solar Energy Corporation of India to cater to the farm sector.
The transmission losses which stood at 2.6% in 2020-21 could be reduced to 2.4% so far in 2021-22, and the distribution losses came down from 7.5% in 2020-21 to 5% in 2021-22, Mr. Srikant added.
AP-Transco Joint MDs I. Prudhvi Tej and B. Malla Reddy, Directors K. Praveen Kumar and K. Muthupandian, and Genco Directors G. Chandra Sekhar Raju, M.V.V. Satyanarayana, and Syed Rafi took part.
