Power crisis will worsen if excess consumption is not checked: KSEB

With the sti©ing summer heat continuing to drive up electricity usage in the State, the Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB) has warned consumers that the power situation could worsen, especially between 7 p.m. and 2 a.m., if consumption is not brought under control immediately.

A meeting of the KSEB management on Tuesday concluded that the situation could warrant drastic measures if consumption was not kept under check. The KSEB ’ndings will be placed before a review meeting to be chaired by Electricity Minister K. Krishnankutty on May 2.

The per day consumption on April 29 stood at 113.15 million units (mu) and maximum demand (evening hours) at 5,717 megawatts (MW), both alltime highs for Kerala. “Last year, the peak demand on the same day was 5,024 MW. The is more than what our power system can handle. If consumption exceeds a certain limit, the grid will shut down on its own,” the State-run power utility said.

Kerala is currently facing a shortage of 500-600 MW during the evening hours. This demand-supply gap was being ’lled through purchases from power exchanges. However, there is now a shortage at the exchanges, a senior KSEB o¢cial said.

Outages

The KSEB warning came amid consumers accusing the KSEB of imposing unannounced load-shedding and failure to restore power supply promptly during outages. The KSEB management rubbished the charge that lapses on the part of KSEB sta¤ are causing the outages. Under the automatic demand management system (ADMS), which is in place to ensure grid security, supply automatically shuts o¤ if the drawal exceeds a certain limit. ADMS is mandated by the Indian Electricity Grid Code. According to the KSEB, there were several instances across the State the other day when overloaded 11-kV feeders shut down. In such cases, the feeders cannot be charged for ’ve minutes.

The KSEB requested consumers not to see its sta¤ as adversaries since the problem is more “technical” in nature. Increasing instances of the public taking their protest to the section o¢ces and quarrelling with the sta¤ would only a¤ect the latter’s morale, it said.