This refers to the power shortage facing Kashmir at present. During 70’s and 80’s, load shedding would start from March till October or November. But as years pass, other states are making progress, our state goes from bad to worse. This is in spite of the fact that every year budget is increased by thousands of crores and every year thousands leave the state in the search for livelihood, as the earning capacity of state subjects is contracting year after year.
 I have seen in Tamil Nadu, that they are using wind mills to the hilt for power generation in coastal areas where wind velocity is very high and in this hot weather, they are overcoming power shortage to a large extent, with very little load shedding needed and thus they are overcoming the power generation shortage, which is present in whole of India. It came in the news that in some areas of Banihal mountains, where the railways are building bridges, that wind speed is more than 100Kms. May be in other mountainous ranges around  the valley, there may be many such areas and if these are surveyed and those areas identified, where there is high speed wind but heavy snow fall does not occur, windmills could be installed and power could be generated, which could be used locally. It seems the cost of installing these wind mills remains within limits and in this respect, assistance from the “ministry of Renewable and non conventional Energy, Govt. Of India”, headed by Dr. Farooq Abdullah could be taken. At least,we could make sure that this power is not stolen by NHPC. I am not an expert in this field, but I wanted to give an idea to experts to think about it as a alternate source.  Our case is in total contrast to Himachal Pradesh and Uttrakhand, where lot of electricity is produced from water resources and all is used locally and in these states, no load shedding is needed even in winter months and electricity is cheaper than in this state.

G M Mattoo
gmmattoo@gmail.com

Lastupdate on : Mon, 2 Jul 2012 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Mon, 2 Jul 2012 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Tue, 3 Jul 2012 00:00:00 IST