Trial 24-Hour Power For State Farmers To End Monday

The trial run of the 24-hour uninterrupted power supply for farmers in Telangana that started on November 6 ends on Monday (November 20) midnight, and they will continue to receive the usual nine-hour power supply from Tuesday.

Telangana Transco & Genco CMD D Prabhakar Rao communicated this to Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao at Pragathi Bhavan on Sunday.

He also said that the experiment of 24-hour power supply was a success, and that from January 1, 2018, round-the-clock power would be provided regularly to the agricultural sector in the state.

It may be recalled that 24-hour power was being supplied from November 6 for 23 lakh pumpsets in the state.

Attributing the success of the pilot run to prior planning, the CMD said that the erstwhile Medak, Karimnagar and Nalgonda districts had been getting 24x7 power on a trial basis since July, and that helped scale the exercise to the entire state.

"We have been supplying 24-hour power to the agriculture pumpsets in the entire state for the past two weeks. Initially the electricity department thought of implementing the scheme for only five to six days. But in order to make an in-depth study of the burden on the supply from the transformers to the 400 KV sub-stations, we decided to continue the round-the-clock supply till Monday midnight. We now have a clear understanding of several important aspects, including the peak hours during the 24-hour period," Rao said.

The CMD also said that some people were running the pumpsets for 24 hours straight, leading to depletion of groundwater level. "This can be solved by removing the auto-starters from the pumpsets. Ideally, farmers should voluntarily remove the auto-starters. If the groundwater level goes down even 24-hour power supply will serve no purpose. It is important to utilize water judiciously," Rao said.

A special drive would be taken from December 5 to remove the auto-starters, he added.