In a relief to power-deficient Maharashtra, the state will get more electricity before the advent of summer. However, officials said despite the increase in availability, the state electricity distribution utility won’t roll back power cuts in areas with high distribution losses. Maharashtra presently has a shortfall of around 500 to 700MW.
With power availability on the rise, the Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Limited (MahaVitaran) will reduce its purchase of electricity from the power exchanges.
A senior MahaVitaran official said the state was getting around 100MW power from the first 500MW unit of the National Thermal Power Corporation’s (NTPC) Vindhyanchal stage 4, which was commissioned on Thursday. Maharashtra is expected to get its full quota of 135MW soon.
The second 660MW unit of Adani Power at Tiroda was synchronised with the grid on Friday and the state may get some infirm power in the initial days. The set is expected to be commercially operational by the end of the second week of March. MahaVitaran will get the entire 660MW electricity generated from the set.
The state’s power demand presently hovers around 14,000 MW. At present, load-shedding is being carried out on 1,000 feeders or in around 18% of the state, where distribution and commercial losses are higher than 45% in rural areas and 42% in urban pockets.
The state owned power distribution utility has stopped evening load-shedding in these high loss areas till March 28.
@DNA
