Shillong: ‘April is the cruelest month,’ as the saying goes and as the denizens of Meghalaya facing power cuts extending from nine to 11 hours in a day must have realized. They may find it hard to believe it, however, that Meghalaya is one of the states that performed well in the area of power generation last April.
But, according to a PTI report from New Delhi, power generation in the country exceeded target by almost six per cent in April and the northeastern region – Meghalaya included – performed the best.
The northeastern region — Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Tripura, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram — performed the best by registering a jump of about 27 per cent by producing 697 million units in April 2014 over the target of 549 million units, the PTI report said.
Indian utilities generated 86,592 million units of electricity in March-April, exceeding the target by almost six per cent, as power capacity in the country increased. Power generation climbed by 4,852 million units, or 5.94 per cent, over the planned level of 81,740 million units, according to data from the Central Electricity Authority (CEA), a government body tasked with facilitating overall development of the sector.
A year earlier, actual generation at 77,579 million units was a tad higher than the target of 76,914 million units. “(This is) because of new capacity getting added,” said Debashish Mishra, Senior Director at Deloitte India.
In the northern states, including Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan, power generation fell short of the goal by about 2.21 per cent, at 21,170 million units. Import of power from neighbouring Bhutan was 78 million units, a drop of 62 per cent from the targeted level of 207 million units. The generation target for 2014-15 is 1023 billion units, according to the CEA.
The country’s installed power generation capacity was 2,43,028.95 megawatts (MW) at the end of March. One MW can produce 1,000 units of electricity in one hour. (Source PTI)