Aman Sood

Tribune News Service

Patiala, June 24

Almost a fortnight after the paddy season started, farmers continue to face acute shortage of power to run their tubewells and arrange enough water for their fields.

Farmer unions are on a warpath at many places and have started rounding up power corporation offices and holding agitations against the Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL).

“In many villages, fields are running dry with no power supply for the past almost a week, causing heavy losses. Sometimes, we get power for just four-five hours and that too with interruptions, leaving paddy nurseries dry and the employed labour sitting idle,” claimed a member of a farmer union.

Another member of the union claimed that in certain areas, PSPCL officials were yet to inform farmers as to when power supply would be restored, if at all.

On paper, the PSPCL is well placed to meet the demand of 14,000 MW from its sources within Punjab and other central sector projects, including power exchange. “However, practically there are many constraints to fulfil the demand exceeding 13,000 MW as there is a limit of 7,300 MW to import power from outside Punjab, including power purchase as per demand,” said an expert.

Satnam Singh Behru, senior leader of the Consortium of Indian Farmers Association, said: “Irregular supply to fields and delayed rains mean that we are suffering losses as paddy fields are dry despite arranging labour, which is now without work.”

The three private generators at Rajpura, Talwandi Sabo and GVK Goindwal have 3,920 MW capacity. At Talwandi Sabo, one unit of 660 MW capacity was shut down three months ago. The total thermal and hydro power available on paper today is about 6,000 MW.

In the last few days, the maximum gross generation from all sources within the state remains about 5,600 MW and with the start of all units at Ropar and Lehra Mohabatt, it is roughly around 6,000 MW.

“With maximum possible drawl of 7,300 MW from outside the total power availability may remain around 13,300 MW. Punjab touched maximum demand of over 13,100 MW on Wednesday but Punjab was overdrawing power of more than 400 MW at that time against scheduled drawl and it touched 7,500 MW,” said All-India Power Engineers Federation spokesman VK Gupta.

Meanwhile, A Venu Prasad said PSPCL had purchased 879 MW from power exchange at the rate of Rs 3.85 per unit and is meeting the highest rising power demand.

“PSPCL has made arrangements to meet the demand up to 13,700 MW. The purchase of power from exchange is mainly due to failure of 615 MW unit of Talwandi Sabo thermal plant at Mansa,” he said.

“This deficit is being arranged by procuring power on day-to-day basis from market, limited to transmission constraints of national grid,” Prasad said, in a statement issued here on Wednesday.