Thiruvananthapuram: What if the monsoons have played truant, the transmission bottleneck that had prevented the flow of cost-effective power from traders outside the state has been removed. A third transformer of 315 MVA (mega volt amp) capacity has become operational at Areekode Substation in Malappuram from Tuesday, allowing the state to import its full quota of 2900 MW from traders across the country. Hitherto, the state could import a maximum of only 2500 MW (the state’s peak demand is 3171 MW).
KSEBL’s power purchase cost, as a consequence, will decline. This also means that the additional 400 MW KSEBL had contracted last year, in view of the unprecedented drought situation in the state, could be imported fully. With the work on the transformer remaining incomplete, only 200 MW of the contracted power could be imported from March 1.
It will take at least a week for the state to take full advantage of the ease in transmission congestion. At the moment, the state is temporarily deprived of 500 MW as a result of the annual maintenance work on Talcher-Kolar System or the East-South Interconnection II. “The work will be over only by March 11 but from then on we can import our full quota,” said Mr Shaji N N, the transmission chief engineer in charge of system operations.
Bringing further cheer to power managers, scattered summer rains have abruptly brought down daily power consumption by nearly 10 million units. From over 70 million units, daily consumption has dropped to near 60 MU. However, the work on the Talcher-Kolar System has forced KSEBL to crank up its hydel generation to meet its daily demand, and also to source 0.28 MU of power from Kozhikode Diesel Power Plant, the least costly of the diesel and naphtha plants. “Increasing internal generation for a small period will not pose any problems as KSEBL had done well to keep hydel generation as low as possible for the last two months,” said Mr Brijlal V, the generation chief engineer.
