Power transmission projects: Officials asked to speed up ongoing work

LUCKNOW : Principal secretary, energy, Alok Kumar has directed officials to speed up work related to the ongoing transmission projects so that there was no load shedding in the state in future.

Holding a review meeting here, he said the capacity of the state’s transmission grid had to be increased to 22,500 MW in view of the government’s target of providing uninterrupted power for all by March 2019.

At present, a lot of load shedding is done in various parts of the state during the summer due to the grid having inadequate capacity to carry the electricity load required to meet the demand. He said the chief minister and the energy minister were both serious about the power supply situation in the state. He warned officials against laxity.

Kumar also expressed dissatisfaction over the progress of the Saubhagya scheme. He asked officials to ensure each and every electricity connection issued under the scheme was ledgerised so that the billing started against all such connections.

The UPPCL had also decided to set up the hi-tech (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) system in state’s eight cities, including Lucknow, to rid these cities of power breakdowns, he said.

Kumar has written letters to the divisional commissioners concerned, asking them to incorporate the project in the smart city scheme. Availability of uninterrupted power supply, he said was an inseparable element of a smart city. Kumar said UPPCL also was ready to partially fund the Rs 400 crore scheme.

The eight cities where the system has been proposed are Lucknow, Varanasi, Aligarh, Moradabad, Saharanpur, Bareilly, Allahabad and Jhansi.