From Our Special Correspondent
Daijiworld Media Network - Bengaluru
Bengaluru, Nov 10: Thanks to the copious rains across Karnataka, the chronic power situation in the State has eased a bit and the power cuts and load shedding has been "temporarily" suspended with prospects of a bright festival of lights, Deepavali.
In fact, the situation has improve to such an extent that the Bengaluru Energy Supply Company Ltd (Bescom) has not resorted to any power cuts since Sunday.
The dip in temperatures coupled with copious rains appears to have eased the power situation in the State a bit with the peak demand coming down.
The power demand seen a drop and the power utilities are now using hydel resources to make up for the shortage.
The State has been reeling under a power crisis since the last couple of months due to poor monsoons and low storage levels in almost all the hydel reservoirs besides technical glitches in the generating units.
Bescom, which caters to eight districts, including Bengaluru Urban and Rural, saw the demand on Monday fall to around 3,000 MW from the usual 4,000 MW.
The power utility is even looking at a power cut-free Deepavali in areas it caters to.
"The demand went down by around 600 MW under Bescom limits. Before the rain, even with truncated generation, the demand was around 3,500 MW," said Pankaj Kumar Pandey, Managing Director of Bescom.
Having pressed hydel resources into service to meet the shortage and having received 200 MW from the central grid, he said.
Bescom areas will not see load-shedding at least for the next few days.
The State is seeing around 5 million units (MU) power being generated from hydel resources each day.
However, even this is considered low compared to the average 40 MU available,
The thermal units too are not fully functional.
"Both units of the Udupi Power Corporation Ltd. are working. But three of the eight units of the Raichur Thermal Power Station are out of order, and one of the two units of the Bellary Thermal Power Station is working," an official said.
"We should see the situation improve soon," official sources said indicating that Tamil Nadu too might relax its rigid opposition for supply of power by its private energy producing companies.