APDCL bought power worth Rs 30,000 crore in past five years

Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI: The APDCL (Assam Power Distribution Company Ltd.) spent around Rs 30,000 crore in the past five years to purchase power from different sources to meet the power requirement in the state.

The state had around 59 lakh power consumers in 2019-20, and that increased to 67 lakh in 2022-23. On the other hand, its own power generation remained stagnant. The power requirement of the state was 10,192 MU in 2020-21, and the power generation of the state was 1,389 MU. Likewise, in 2021-22, the power requirement of the state was 10,844 MU compared to the state's own generation of 2,005 MU. In 2022-23, the power requirement in the state was 11,464 MU, against the generation of 2,213 MU of power from its own sources. However, the vision of APGCL (Assam Power Generation Corporation Ltd.) is to achieve power generation expansion up to 2,000 MW by 2030 to cope with the growing energy demand and to accelerate economic growth in the state. At present, APGCL's installed capacity stands at 428 MW.

According to sources, power demand in the state has been rising rapidly in the past few years. The number of domestic power consumers was 5.5 lakh in 2019-20, and that rose to 6.2 lakh in 2022-23. The number of commercial power consumers in the state during the same period increased to 3.45 lakh from 2.8 lakh. Likewise, the number of industrial consumers increased to 26,000 in 2022-23 from 22,000 in 2019-20.

According to sources, as the state has no scope to increase its own power generation, the APDCL purchases power from different sources to meet the demand. The APDCL purchased power worth Rs 5,100 crore in 2018-19, Rs 5,530 crore in 2019-20, Rs 5,807 crore in 2020-21, Rs 5,917 crore in 2021-22, and Rs 8,478 crore in 2022-23.

The APDCL took its strategies for capacity enhancement, like planning in advance for the procurement of sufficient quantities of power to meet demand, raising awareness among customers about consumption and utilisation of power, installing smart meters in all households, detection of unauthorised use of power through vigilance cells, stress on artificial intelligence-based metering and billing to reduce human intervention as far as possible, identifying areas of high loss and pilferage, and thereby focusing efforts on necessary corrective action.

Also Read: Take stakeholders’ opinion and reply by Jan 22: Assam Electricity Regulatory Commission to APDCL

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