Significant improvement in the power situation in the Islands has been made: CS

Port Blair, Jan 17: Chief Secretary, A&N Administration, closely monitors the power situation of A&N Islands by taking a Review Meeting of senior officers of Electricity Department every Monday of the week. Significant improvement in the power situation in the Islands has been made.

(1)          10 MW generation capacity at Bambooflat has been added in grid during October, 2023 to cater to peak demand as a result of which is no load shedding at present.

(2)          Subsequently, for redundancy in generation system, another 5 MW capacity is expected in next fortnight. This will meet any upcoming peak demand and avoid any power crisis in future.

(3)          Apart from this, Relay Coordination work (time and current settings of relays) among all power houses and stations at Port Blair was taken up through outsourced agency restricting faults to travel in power stations to avoid shut down / collapse of grid in the event of feeders and tie line faults.

(4)          Transmission & Distribution Net work has been strengthened by installing new Distribution Transformers, Poles, HT/LT lines and old/dilapidated lines. As a result, feeders and line faults have reduced to a considerable extent. Numerous steps have been taken by means of tree / branch cutting, replacement of poles, wires and transformers with erection of new lines to minimize the forced power interruptions/outages.

(5)          In the last two years more than 5000 new connections have been released. Although the Average Cost of Power Supply is Rs.42/unit, the consumers get supply at Rs. 2.5/ for less than 100 Units and an average @ Rs. 10/ unit therefore a subsidy of more than 75%.

(6)          Concerted efforts were taken to increase the power supply hours from    12 Hrs. to 24 Hrs. in two tribal settlements at Dugong Creek, Little Andaman and Strait Island, South Andaman by augmenting the installed capacity.

(7)          For seamless redressal of power related grievances of consumers and general public, a Centralized Control Room (CCR) has been established 24x7. A Toll Free No. 1800-345-1111 is functional at CCR 24x7 in EMC building of the department for receiving the complaints. The complaints received at CCR are diverted through Consumer Complaint Handling Mechanism (CCHM) to the Concerned site offices for early redressal with in the stipulated time period and daily reports are being monitored effectively.

(8)          Recently, one 1500 KVA DG set shifted from Sita Nagar Power House to Swaraj Dweep to mitigate the power paucity of 2 MW due to sudden breakdown of two DG sets (2x0.808KW). The DG set started feeding power of around 1MW from 20.12.2023. Further, the engines of 2 DG sets under break down have reached Port Blair and shall be installed at Swaraj Dweep power house by mid of January, 2024 to add 1.2 MW capacity to meet the present peak demand.

For redundancy and in view of rise in peak demand, addition of  2 MW through hiring was proposed which is under finalization and expected to deliver power of 2 MW by June, 2024 after the approval of agreement by JERC.

(9)          Further following Long term power solutions for A&N Islands with the support of Ministry of Power are underway.

(i)            Inter connection from Mainland to Port Blair

In a Meeting held on 13.10.2023 in MoP the proposed HVDC interconnection of A&N Island by Central Transmission Utility of India Ltd. (CTUIL) with mainland through + 320 KV, 250 MW undersea cable was considered as the most economical solution which will bring down the present cost of power generation in A&N Islands considerably

(ii)           Greening  of  Islands

Under green initiatives, the department has installed 29.23MWp Solar Power Plants (Ground mounted + Rooftop) in Port Blair, South Andaman and Car Nicobar. Greening of islands is a vision of Hon'ble Prime Minister of India, and under RE plan, solar power projects of different capacities with Battery storage solution are under execution which includes 100 MW for South Andaman, 3.8MW for Swaraj Dweep, 1.3 MW for Shaheed Dweep, 5.7 MW for Little Andaman along with an aggregate capacity of 13.83 MW for Nicobar Group of islands. In addition, NIWE I undertaking WRA studies at various identified locations to explore wind potential for taking up wind power projects.

(iii) Rooftop Solar Project

Under Hon'ble Prime Minister's vision of complete saturation of solarization, A&N Administration has set the target to solarize all Govt. Buildings through empanelled vendors in CAPEX mode by December 2024. In order to promote installation of Rooftop Solar Plant in all residential buildings, A&N Administration is set to undertake the execution through RESCO mode wherein all the households shall be installed with modular sized RTS plant by 2026. The commercial & other establishment shall be encouraged to solarize their buildings either in CAPEX/RESCO or through their own arrangement. A&N Administration is committed to achieve 100 % saturation of Rooftop Solar Plant within targeted timeline, a press release said.