PDD blames consumers for power crisis in Kashmir

Srinagar, Jan 28: With prevailing electricity crisis echoing in and outside Jammu and Kashmir Assembly,the Power Development Department (PDD) has blamed consumers and said unrestricted peak demand is almost double than the peak demand to be actually met forcing the department to go for scheduled and unscheduled power curtailments.
“Against registered load of 3,101 MW, the demand should have been around 1,551 MW but it is around 2,950 MW (unrestricted), which is being used by the consumers over and above registered connected load,” a senior official of PDD said.
Jammu and Kashmir Assembly which is in budget session witnessed massive protests and walkouts by opposition members over the prevailing power crisis especially in the valley which is reeling under sub-zero temperature for over the past month and witnessed frequent protests by local residents.
He said the demand should not exceed 1,551 MW at load demand factor of 0.5.
The load demand factor is defined as ratio of peak demand and total connected load and takes care of natural diversity in the consumer load.
Against 1,833 MW contract demand (agreemented load) in winter capital Jammu, the unrestricted peak demand is 1,350 MW against 917 peak demand to be actually met after consideration of loan diversity factor, he said.
Similarly in Kashmir division, there is 1,268 MW contract demand (agreemented load) but the unrestricted peak demand has reached 1,600 MW against 634 peak demand to be actually met after consideration of load diversity factor, he said.
He said the department has met the peak demand of 2,280 MW – 1,100 MW in Jammu and 1,180 MW in Kashmir.
The officer said there has been an increase of 3.3 per cent and 1.5 per cent in energy consumption in Kashmir and Jammu divisions last year compared to previous year.
The energy consumed in Kashmir till December last year was 6,679.930 MU against 6,466.060 MU the previous year, while it was 5,319.684 MU in Jammu in 2017 against 5,239.538 in 2016, he said.
During winter, he said the demand increases manifold in Kashmir division and winter regions of Jammu province due to excessive use of heating devices which in turn overloads the transformers and allied equipment at various voltage levels thus forcing the department for unscheduled power cuts.
Likewise, he said during summers in Jammu the power demand increases due to excessive use of cooling devices and the unprecedented demand of the consumers exceed the agreement load thereby the installed capacity of the transformers and its allied equipment at different level gets overloaded as such the department is forced for scheduled and unscheduled curtailments to save the vital equipments at receiving station and grid station levels.
The officer said the daily curtailment programme in vogue for winter in Jammu and Kashmir regions include six-seven hour power cut in Kashmir and two hour power cut in Jammu in metered areas, while eight-nine hour curtailment in Kashmir and eight hour curtailment in Jammu in unmetered areas.
However, he said the use of unauthorized load creates system constraints by way of overloading the system at transmission, sub-transmission and at distribution level thereby causing further distress cuts in addition to the scheduled cuts.
“In view of the uncontrolled use of load by consumers, in violation of their load agreements, there are times when the aggregate load increases to levels which are beyond the handling capacity of local grid station or 33 KV feeding line or receiving station or even 11 KV feeding line,” he said.
The officer said a total of Rs 1,233.99 crore were realised from the consumers during the financial year 2017-18 ending November 2017.
While Rs 695.16 crore was realized from consumers from April to November 2017 in Jammu, the amount stands at Rs 514.37 crore in Kashmir and Rs 24.46 crore in Ladakh region, he said.