Chandrababu Naidu Will invest Rs 1L crore in energy sector

Hyderabad: Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu said Rs 1 lakh crore will be invested in the power sector in the state in the next five years both in private and public sectors.

Such an investment would be a boon for the state economy and would attract huge industrial investments which in turn would generate employment. “We (AP) will be in a position to sell 10,472 million units of power per annum to the other states, which will give an income of Rs 4,492 crore.

Now we have to further focus on expediting energy efficiency activities and have set the target of making Andhra Pradesh an incandescent-bulb free state by March 2017 which results in multiple benefits like reduction in power demand, carbon emissions and electricity bills of the consumers apart from protecting the natural resources such as coal, gas, oil etc,” he said.

In an open letter to the people of the state, the Chief Minister said the main objective of the government is to supply electricity at affordable price and ensure quality power on par with global standards.

“No doubt we have overcome the crisis in power sector, wherein public were severely suffered and were subjected to indiscriminate power cuts and industrial growth stagnated due to power holidays i.e. three days in a week.

The AP government has crossed all these hindrances and achieved many a milestones in the sector in the areas of acceleration of power generation, huge capacity addition, drastic reduction of transmission & distribution losses, promotion of renewable energy and reached the stage of becoming a power surplus state,”he said.

For implementation of energy efficiency activities, the Government of India has plans to invest Rs 1,000 crore every year in the next five years. In agriculture sector itself, around Rs 5,000 crore investments are planned for implementing Demand Side Management (DSM) measures in a phased manner with the support of Energy Efficient Systems Limited (EESL), Government of India.

The state government has proposed this project to cover all existing 15 lakh pump sets. The beauty of the scheme is to provide high quality energy efficient pump sets to farmers without putting a single rupee burden on them, he said.

As a first of its kind in the country, the AP government is also implementing Domestic Efficient Fans Programme (DEFP) wherein five star rated energy efficient fans are to be distributed to the consumers at affordable prices. The cost of the fan is recovered in upfront basis/monthly instalment of 24 months as per the choice of the consumer. In the initial stage two lakhs fans are going to be offered to the willing consumers.