By Our Reporter
SHILLONG, Feb 21: The state government is making efforts to minimise power outages, with Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma assuring the House that there will be bare minimum load-shedding this year, causing the least amount of inconvenience to the public.
“We do anticipate that we won’t encounter the same difficulties as we did in the previous fiscal year. I am not giving an assurance that there will be no load-shedding but we are quite sure it will be bare minimum,” he said during discussions on the Governor’s address.
He explained that the state had resorted to power banking in the past. “The state was in a very difficult and complex situation the previous year. We bank the power in terms of the units that are shared, so if we were to take some units of power, we would later give them back.”
“Due to this power banking, the load-shedding continued well into May, June, July, and August last year, even after the rains, because we were producing the power and giving it back to the agencies that had given it to us in January, February, and March. That led us to give back close to 2 million units of power on a daily basis for companies with which we had banked earlier and who had provided us with power,” he stated.
Sangma explained that the state government changed its strategy this time around by buying power when the rates are less and selling at higher rates.
According to him this exercise has really helped the Power department and it also actually earns revenue to some extent by selling power at the right time and taking the power from different agencies at the right time.
Apart from that, the government has ensured that all the units are working to their maximum potential depending on the availability of water, he added.
