‘Saubhagya’ may prove lucky for private investment in state
Govt aims at providing 24x7 power to every household by March 2019
LUCKNOW: Electricity is one of the most critical components of infrastructure required for the economic growth of any state.
Over the last two decades or so, unreliable power supply and prolonged outages have been one of the major deterrents to investment in the state.
Uttar Pradesh still remains the country’s most power deficit state after Jammu and Kashmir, the peak shortage being 10.9% between April 2017 and January 2018, says a Central Electricity Authority report.
But the power situation has considerably improved in the state for around a year and a half.
UP’s power demand is second only to Maharashtra’s even today when the state is not able to fulfil the full requirement, the CEA report adds.
The peak demand-supply gap used to be recorded as high as 2025% or even more only till recently, CEA data suggests.
The previous governments’ efforts for augmentation of generation capacities in the last 12 years appear to have started paying off now.
The present regime has not only placed a greater thrust on supplying round the clock power and providing last mile connectivity but has also shown the political will that was largely missing so far to deal with power thieves firmly.
“The power situation in the state has indisputably looked up considerably during the last one year or so to much of the relief of the people and boosted industries’ confidence,” Indian Industries Association (IIA) executive director DS Verma says.
Implementing the Centre’s Saubhagya scheme, the Yogi Adityanath government now aims at providing 24x7 power to every household in the state by March 2019.
HIGHER DEMAND
The ongoing Saubhagya scheme may prove lucky not only for people in general but also change the fate of industries. The completion of the ambitious project that seeks to provide last mile connectivity is expected to raise the peak power demand in UP from the current 17,000-18000 MW to over 22,000 MW in 2019-20 as per a conservative estimate made by the UP Power Corporation Ltd (UPPCL) in the Power For All (PFA) memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed with the Centre in April last year.
The demand may actually cross the projected figure going by the fact that the peak load/ demand was already more than 20,000 MW (20,274 MW to be precise) between April 2017 and January 2018, the CEA report said.
Meeting the demand is believed to require a lot of investment in terms of capacity additions, apart from strengthening the distribution and transmission networks.
“The government spending is expected be around Rs 20,000 crore during the next two years to create new distribution and transmission infrastructure and upgrade existing ones in the shape of transformers, sub stations etc,” principal secretary, energy and UPPCL chairman, Alok Kumar said.
The electrification of around 1.75 crore households, more than 40% of the country’s total four crore households without an electricity connection, and spurt in power demand will be a naturally corollary to an increase in demand for goods like transformers, meters, cables etc.