Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Monday evening ordered the immediate withdrawal of all power regulatory restrictions that were imposed on industries across the state to meet the power crisis.
The crisis was triggered by a delayed monsoon and the unprecedented surge in demand from both agricultural and domestic sectors.
Reviewing the power situation in the state after the resumption of generation at one of the three non-functional units at Talwandi Sabo Thermal plant, the chief minister directed the Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL) to ease off all power regulatory restrictions on industrial consumers across the state with immediate effect. The chief minister was informed that the plant at Talwandi Sabo had resumed 660 MW production, improving the power situation in the state.
The decision on the complete withdrawal of the restrictions were taken by the Chief Minister soon after PSPCL announced a similar but partial withdrawal in districts falling in central and border zones. The PSPCL had allowed all industries, except those using continuous power, to operate at full capacity from today.
However, after the Chief Minister’s intervention, all industries across the state, including those using continuous power round the clock (Textile, Chemicals, and Spinning Mills, etc), can now operate to full capacity.
It may be recalled that owing to an unprecedented rise in
the demand of power, the PSPCL had, as a temporary measure, ordered restrictions on
Industrial consumers of the State in order to provide continuous power supply
to Domestic consumers and 8 hours power supply to the Agriculture sector for
paddy operations. Continuous process industries were allowed to operate at 50%
of their load, a spokesperson from the Chief Minister’s office said.
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Significantly, despite the high demand for consumption, the PSPCL had not imposed any restrictions on small and medium supply industrial consumers, rice shellers, cattle feed units, call centers, mushroom farms, food processing units, and other essential Industries/services from the beginning, the spokesperson further revealed.
Punjab has 99,834 small power industrial consumers besides 30,176 medium power consumers upon whom no usage restriction has been levied at all despite rising demand for power across the domestic sector. To meet up the shortage, only large supply consumers (5071 in number) which use 1000 KVA SCD had been asked to use 100 KVA for 12 hours a day. Large supply arc furnaces of which 282 operate in the state, had been restricted to 5% of SCD only.
The spokesperson said that despite the failure of TSPL Plant, PSPCL had successfully met the highest ever energy demand of 3066 lakh units on July 1. The day’s demand had surpassed the earlier record of 3018 lakh units of power supply in a single day in the state.