SHILLONG: Chief Minister Conrad Sangma on Monday informed that load shedding duration has been reduced to 2 hours at night from Monday (January 20) while the exact timing will be worked out by the MeECL.
As the state government has come under severe criticism for the long duration load shedding, Conrad addressed a press conference here on Monday to inform that a meeting held to discuss the power scenario had come out with certain solutions.
Apparently, paying the pending dues to concerned agencies has helped the government to tide over the power crisis.
He said that as far as the arrangement with NTPC is concerned, a letter of credit of about Rs 13 crore has been issued and the government is paying NEEPCO Rs 65 lakh on a daily basis.
Sources said that the government assured to pay the dues of Rs 13.8 crore to NTPC to avail 60 MW of power which will help the government to tide over the crisis for 45 days.
To a question on pending dues, the chief minister said, “We are ensuring that these payments are paid regularly”.
Conrad informed that the total pending bills to be paid by the consumers is Rs 181 crore and hence he urged the people to pay their dues on time while stating that the industrial high tension dues are about Rs 52 crore and the normal consumer dues will come to Rs 40.1 crore.
With a demand of 600 plus MW in the state, Conrad said that there is a deficiency of 300 MW as the power production from Umiam and Leshka projects is only 300 MW.
However, he said power is also generated from different projects in the North East. Meghalaya has a share in these projects, including those executed by NEEPCO.
The only way to address the power scenario is to improve the efficiency and encourage consumers to use power in an economical manner and to increase power production, he said.
Conrad said that power issues came up due to the damage to two power plants — Kopili in Assam and Palatana in Tripura.
Both the projects sustained infrastructural damages and secondly, there was a change in the government’s policy in terms of power banking, he said.
According to Conrad, many power projects have been stuck due to delay in the preparation of DPR, land acquisition, delay in transmission lines that are to be put up. He said that a number of reviews were held to ensure that the projects move forward.
He said the state is following up 16 projects and out of these, 600 MW of projects are in different stages.
When asked, Conrad said the major issue that the state is facing other than production/generation is the aggregate technical & commercial losses (AT & C) that the state has and because of which the state is in the process of getting smart metering to reduce such losses and allow the department to monitor different consumption patterns. He informed that this step will be expanded and will cover the 4,50,000 consumers in the state.
Renewable energy
He further said renewable energy is being used in different government offices.
Many government offices will have the facility of solar energy along with the provision for net metering which will allow power to go into the grid.
The first building to have the net metering system along with the solar energy is the CM’s bungalow, he said.
“We are producing 50 KW hours a day from the energy in the Chief Minister’s bungalow and once the net metering takes place, energy will go back into the grid and whatever I use from the grid will then be netted and whatever is additional is only the amount that we will be paying”, he said urging the public to go for such a system also.
