Rural power supply likely to improve by February

HYDERABAD: In order to improve three-phase power supply to encourage medium and small scale industries in rural areas and to reduce urban-rural disparities, the state government has decided to start the Feeder Segregation Project.As per the study of the energy department, the project requires an expenditure of about Rs 3,014 crore.The principal secretary, Energy Dinesh Kumar has written a letter to secretary, ministry of power to emphasise the need to implement the project.FSP involves setting up a parallel rural distribution network of 11 KV feeders spanning over 150 km to segregate existing 8,880 mixed rural feeders. Top priority will be given for implementation near mandal headquarters, where there is potential for setting up small industrial units.Apart from major benefits to rural areas, the Discoms are going to benefit through- reduction in the distribution losses, better monitoring and accountability of energy input and supply hours to farmers, more stable load patterns amongst rural consumers and optimisation of power purchase requirements due to better load management.The state government has requested the Centre to consider the project by providing financial assistance under the National Electricity Fund or any other suitable scheme.The Energy department has also indicated that the joint managing director (Distribution), APTransco has been appointed as nodal officer for a study on cost benefit analysis and impact of rural feeder segregation.Meanwhile, with the power utilities facing strain in bridging the gap between supply and demand due to non-availability of resources like coal, oil, natural gas and hydel generation, the chief minister has already written a letter to the Centre for additional allocation of natural gas and coal.