Telangana industries running on back-up power

Hyderabad: Industries, corporates and traders have to depend on back-up power to meet upto 60 per cent of their requirement and an estimated 1 lakh inverters have been sold this year.

Not only has this added to operational costs, the demand for backup power has also resulted in shortage of supply of gen-sets and inverters.

Despite the summer season being well past, the sale of inverters has gone up in the city by 50 per cent compared to last year.

While bigger electronics showrooms do not sell inverters, it is the smaller dealers who are making the best out of the opportunity due to the unprecedented demand.

Such is the jump in the sale of inverters that the discoms, which were earlier keeping tabs on the sale of air-conditioners, are now tracking sale of inverters and have estimated that more than 1 lakh have been sold in the twin cities since the beginning of summer.

“The sale of inverters had picked up since last year but this year the sales have increased tremendously. At least 1 lakh inverters have been sold so far,” said a  source.

With the city experiencing eight to 10 hours of power cuts throughout the day, most small businesses and commercial establishments are completely dependent on back-up power.

“Almost 70 per cent of our power requirement is met by backup generators. There are long hours of scheduled and unscheduled cuts and we cannot afford to stop production, as it will lead to wastage of raw material resulting in huge losses,” said P. Savitha Devi, owner of a small-scale food processing unit.

Domestic consumers too are lining up to buy inverters as they see no respite from the power cuts anytime soon.

“Each year we used to sell around 100 to 120 inverters during the summer season but this year the sales had crossed 200 before the rainy season started and its still picking up. We continue to sell five to 10 inverters each week,” said K. Prasanna.