The Power Grid Corporation of India Limited (PowerGrid) has agreed to increase the transmission corridor by 500 MW for 10 hours every day up to May to help the Southern region partly meet additional power demand.
This move is likely to enable AP Transco to draw more power from January to May from the Eastern region to reduce the power shortage to some extent. The permission to evacuate 500 MW more would help tide over the major constraint of getting power from other regions to meet the growing demand-supply mismatch.
Mr Ajay Jain, CMD of AP Transco had raised the issue of corridor availability and convinced PowerGrid , and the Ministry of Power to provide additional evacuation facility.
During the Southern Regional Power Committee (SRPC) meeting held here, representatives of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Puducherry took part.
During the meeting, they requested the Centre to provide a corridor between the Southern Region (SR) and Northern, Eastern and Western grids and asked PGCIL to expedite works between various regions to enable adequate power flow to the South.
At present, AP Transco is availing the transmission corridor of 750 MW. With this move, additional corridor facility of 500 MW is likely to be added to the region.
Overhaul
During the SRPC meeting, all the major power generating companies — NTPC, NPCIL and NLC — were asked to complete the overhauling of its thermal stations by the end of this month . This move is likely to enable maximum power generation during the peak power requirement phase of January to May.
The commissioning of NTPC Simhadri unit II 500 MW, expected by March, will enable AP get a share of 190 MW. Further, NTPC TNEB 3 x 500 MW Vallur first unit to be commissioned in April (AP share 60 MW), means AP will get an additional 250 MW of power by April.