By IANS,
Bangalore : Karnataka will buy 1,000 MW of power daily for the next three years as the state is reeling under a severe energy crisis, Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa said Tuesday.
“The state hopes to be power sufficient in the next three years and till then we will buy 1,000 MW (daily), irrespective of good rains or not,” the chief minister told reporters after a meeting to review the power situation.
The state buys power from private producers and states like Gujarat which have surplus power.
With a power shortage of up to 300 MW daily, most of the neighbourhoods even in the state capital and nation’s tech hub Bangalore go without electricity for up to three hours a day.
Bangalore requires over 1,600 MW daily but the supply is around 1,400 MW, said Bangalore Electricity Supply Company (BESCOM) officials.
The power supply was so erratic the BESCOM was not in a position to announce a schedule for outages, said an official.
The power cuts take place mostly for an hour in the morning, afternoon and night. There are areas which suffer power disruption for two hours at a stretch.
The situation outside Bangalore is worse with four to six hours of power cuts a day.
Yeddyurappa said the monsoon has not been normal so far in the state, affecting power generation. The state depends heavily on hydro-power with around 65 percent of its requirement of over 7,000 MW daily met by it.
Two major thermal plants, one at Raichur, about 400 km from here, and another at Bellary, 320 km away from here, have also been erratic in power production.
Raichur, with an installed capacity of over 1,500 MW, is producing only 870 MW while the Bellary plant, which had stopped producing power for several days, is generating only 280 MW against an installed capacity of 500 MW, Yeddyurappa said.