Andhra Pradesh Southern Distribution Company sops to farmers
Pumpsets offered to consumers on subsidy
By : DC Correspondent
Update: 2014-09-18 04:11 GMT
Nellore: In a bid to reduce their burden because of agriculture connections, Andhra Pradesh Southern Distribution Company has been persuading the farmers to switch-over to solar pump sets and offering the 1 HP pump sets for Rs 30,000. The cost of the solar pump set in open market is nearly Rs1 lakh but the state and Central governments have been offering 30 per cent and 40 per cent subsidy respectively to encourage the farming community to install these pump sets.
Assistant engineers of the department have been meeting the farmers who have applied for new agriculture connections to opt for solar pump sets citing the advantages. Superintendent Engineer of APSPDCL Nellore division, N. Nagasayana Rao, said that farmers in delta area have been showing interest in the solar pump sets. He said that they are also going to offer energy efficiency saving lamps of 11 watt or 8 watt at subsidised price to the domestic consumers.
“They can replace the ordinary filament lamps (OFL) and save considerably on electricity bills. If there are four OFLs of 60 watt the power consumption is 240 Watt. They can fix four energy saving lamps of 8 watt capacity and save nearly 200 units per month. The 8 watt bulb is being supplied for subsidised rate of Rs10 each to the consumers,” the SE said. According to Nagasayana Rao, APSPDCL has been providing the bulbs through a Delhi-based company in Guntur, Anantapur and Viziayanagaram in the first phase.The other districts including Nellore will be covered in the next phase.