The Andhra Pradesh government has come up with a contingency plan to meet the increasing demand for energy due to the prevalence of severe heat wave conditions in the state under the influence of El Niño.
Energy consumption in the state has reached 285 to 286million units on Tuesday itself along with peak demand of over 14,000mw against the state’s highest ever energy consumption of 288.9mu on May 21, 2026 along with an all-time day peak demand of 15,016mu.
The energy department is expecting the average energy consumption per day to be 280mu with variation of 5 or 6mu either up or down, depending upon the severity of heat and the need for the energy.
AP mainly depends on thermal power generation units owned by both the central and state governments and those under the control of private agencies to get regular power supply. Other sources of power like solar and wind also help to meet the power demand to some extent during the day time.
At present, AP is facing a shortfall of 5 to 8mu of power especially during the peak hour in the evening/night and is purchasing from the open market by paying `10 per unit on an average. Under normal conditions, thermal power cost varies from `1.50 to 4.70 per unit depending upon the demand and supply while power from other sources like solar and wind costs less—1 rupee per unit.
The energy department adopted a strategy to reduce cost for thermal power generation and instead purchased the required power at less cost than the production cost in the open market. This helped them save nearly `52 lakh a day.
AP Power Grid director AKV Bhaskar said, “We have prepared the contingency plan to meet the increasing energy demand by sourcing power from all available sources by ensuring cost-effectiveness. So far, we have not announced any power cut for industrial, agricultural and domestic connections in the state.”
Meanwhile, the state government is taking all requisite measures involving APTransco, APGenco and Discoms to ensure uninterrupted, reliable and quality power to all categories of customers.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: deccanchronicle.com
