With the mercury rising, the demand for power supply has started hovering around 12000 mega watt leaving the UP Power Corporation limited (UPPCl) grappling to ensure a steady supply.
Complaints of prolonged outages in rural areas and towns represented by SP legislators and ministers are pouring in at UPPCl headquarters at Shakti Bhawan. Due to the lack of additional power, the Corporation officials have no options but to take recourse to rostering even as the demand is spiralling by the day.
With the availability of 7500-8000 Mw from all sources, including 1000 Mw purchase from the Energy exchange, the gap between supply and demand has started exceeding 3000 Mw. This is proving to be unmanageable for the UPPCl brass.
Though the UP government has recently provided financial assistance for purchase of additional power from other states and private companies but this is not going to help in managing the crisis. Sources claimed that since UP had not informed the Central authorities in advance, most of the transmission corridors had been engaged by other states. Despite having sufficient funds, UP was hence not able to purchase energy from power surplus states.
The UPPCl claims to be providing 17-hour supply to districts, 20-hour supply at commissionarate level and 22-hour supply to mega cities but in the last one week, no place in state was getting power as per schedule.
The CM's instructions over informing rural areas of supply hours in advance, so that villagers could plan agricultural works, were also not being followed by the UPPCl officials, an SP legislator said.
Only districts like Manpuri, Etawah, Amethi, Rae Bareli, Rampur, Kannauj and Sambhal, having the VIP tags for being represented by big leaders, were in a better position. These districts were getting 22-hour supply on an average but the discrimination was fomenting dissatisfaction among neighbouring districts.
A senior UPPCl official said that the consumers might see power supply improving from the next month as two units of Reliance Energy at Roja would be providing 500 Mw along with some energy being made available by trading companies.
