GUWAHATI, July 14 ? The Assam State Electricity Board (ASEB) proposed to procure 78 per cent of its requirement from outside agencies in 2003-04. In the year it projected sale of 2,115 million units (MU) of power. In 2004-05 also it proposed to procure a similar percentage of power from outside sources.
The peak load hour demand of power in the State is 650 mega watt (MW) during summer season and 590 MW during winter season, while the off-peak hour demand of power in the State is 430 MW during the summer and 390 MW in the winter. The Board stated in its petition for rationalisation of tariff with the Assam Electricity Regulatory Commission (AERC) that its operation was spread over an area of 78,438 sq km. On March 31, 2003 it was supplying power to 9,45,712 consumers and this figure might touch 10,45,000 by March 31, 2004, it said.
The ASEB admitted in its petition that there is a shortfall of 100 MW in power supply during the summer days? peak load hour and of 150 MW during the winter peak load hours. However, there is no shortfall during the summer off-peak hours, but, there is a shortfall of 90 MW during the winter off-peak hours. The winter shortfall arises due to the lean hydel season, it said. The ASEB has one more problem to be tackled. It doesn?t have the matching transmission and sub-transmission system at present to take the total power at its disposal to the doorstep of the consumers even if the entire required amount of 650 MW is made available to it, the petition said.
The present transmission/ sub-transmission / distribution lines of the ASEB consist of ? 220 Kilo Volt (KV) line with a capacity of 1,365 Ckt Km, 132 KV line with 2,044 Ckt Km capacity, 66KV line with 727 Ckt Km capacity, 33 KV line with 5,014 Ckt Km capacity, 11 KV line with 33,851.045 km capacity and LT line with 42,603.585 Km capacity, the petition said. The Board has the transformation capacity of 220/132 KV for 460.00 million voltage ampere (MVA), 132/66 KV for 177.50 MVA, 132/33 KV for 969.50 MVA, 66/33 KV for 239.00 MVA, 33/11KV for 1,013.13 MVA and 11/0.4 KV for 1,956.068 MVA.
Presently, the Board has the installed capacity of 535.5 MW. Of these, 240 MW Bongaigaon Thermal Power Station (BTPS) and 60 MW Chandrapur Thermal Power Station (CTPS) are not in operation. While the BTPS needs intensive renovation and modernisation to have economic operation of the plant, the CTPS is under suspended operation due to prohibitive cost of LSHS/LSFO, which are the main fuel of the plant. Investigations are on to find out an alternative fuel, said the ASEB petition. The 133.5 MW Namrup Thermal Power Station (NTPS) is able to generate around 65 MW of power on sustained basis with the present amount of natural gas made available to it. Short supply of gas also hit the generation of the 120 MW Lakwa Thermal Power Station (LTPS), the ASEB said in its petition.