Srinagar, Jan 13: In a significant development which could bring about some reforms in the Jammu and Kashmir’s ailing power sector, Government of India has approved a multi-crore reforms programme for the State Power Development Department.
The Union Power Ministry has given its nod to Rs 191 crores Restructured-Accelerated Power Development and Reforms Program (R-APDRP) for 30 major towns of the state, including Srinagar and Jammu cities.
“The state government received the formal approval last week. Under the programme the state will receive central assistance of Rs 151.99 crores,” said Commissioner/Secretary, Power, Basharat Ahmad Dhar, adding over Rs 39.25 crores would be borne by the state.
The R-APDRP primarily aims at reducing Aggregate Technical and Commercial (AT&C) losses thereby improving the quality of power delivery, said Dhar.
The scheme will be completed in six years.
The ever-increasing Transmission and Distribution losses and AT&C losses have been a major worry for the state government as they continue to put huge strain on the state finances.
While the T&D losses incurred were highest 65.78 per cent for the last fiscal, the AC&TL losses, which cause wide gap between the projected revenue realization and the actual revenue realized against the Power Purchase Bill, had gone up to 72 percent for 2009-10.
This is despite the fact that government had received Rs 3,900 crores as Power Reform Grants from the Center to cut-down the losses and had clear-cut directions from the Planning Commission to reduce T&D losses by three percent annually. In two phases, the R-APDRP aims at covering urban areas, towns and cities with population of more than 30,000 souls.
“It is the first step which qualifies us for getting funds from the Centre for modernization and renovation of the T&D system. The consumers will become accountable for consuming any amount of energy and there will be no unaccounted supply of energy,” said the Chief Engineer (EM&RE), Manzoor Ahmad Salroo.
He said there are guidelines from the Power Ministry for all the states to drastically cut down the T&D losses. “It is a first step in that direction,” said Salroo, also the nodal officer for R-APDRP in J&K.
The fist phase of the scheme, which is scheduled for completion in 18 months involves setting up Data Center, Disaster (Data) Recovery Center, Centralized Customer Care Call Center, GIS based customer indexing and asset mapping and GIS survey in the identified towns and achieving e-management in power distribution and other initiatives.
The PDD has hired services of System Integrator M/S Wipro Infotech Ltd as Information Technology Implementation Agency for the first phase.
A kick-off meeting between the WIPRO authorities and PDD officials was held here on Thursday. “The letter of intent has been issued to the agency,” said a PDD statement.
The second phase involves revamping and modernization of entire Electric Distribution System to reduce AT&C losses, prevent distress load shedding, 100 percent metering of domestic consumers, HT metering of commercial and industrial consumers and whole range of initiatives to modernize the infrastructure in the sector.
“Pilot Projects have been successfully executed in Soura and Ishber Nishat,” the statement said.
Officials said the department has made “significant progress” under first phase of R-APDRP.
“Apart from other initiatives the department has awarded Ring Fencing contract last November and North Delhi Power Limited has been hired as consultants at cost of Rs 45.22 lakhs for Jammu and Srinagar cities last year,” officials said.
They said 70,000 energy meters available from APDRP have been reallocated to various territorial divisions for installation.
“There is an additional requirement of 23901 meters in Srinagar City which are needed to be procured for 100 percent metering of projected areas. Complete procurement of 12113 meters is to be initiated for Leh and Kargil. An additional 68802 meters are targeted for replacement of non-functional and counter type meters installed in first phase of consumer metering,” they said.
The Power Finance Corporation is the nodal agency for implementing the programme which will be executed simultaneously in all the targeted areas.

Lastupdate on : Thu, 13 Jan 2011 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Thu, 13 Jan 2011 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Fri, 14 Jan 2011 00:00:00 IST