Goa to get additional 50MW power from today

PANAJI: Goa will start receiving additional power of 50 megawatts with effect from Wednesday midnight raising the state's total power allocation from 398MW to 448MW.
Announcing this at a press conference on Wednesday, power minister Aleixo Sequeira said the additional 50MW of power will fulfill Goa's big demand for enhancement of loads, both from domestic consumers as well as industry.Goa's present power requirement is around 425MW, Sequeira said.
Sequeira said that presently Goa has restrictions on power supply during the peak hours from 6pm to 11pm. Also, the electricity department is slow in releasing new connections. Domestic households have also added numerous new electrical gadgets since they first took connections raising their loads substantially. The additional 50MW will meet these loads and remove the restrictions, he said.
Allotment of additional power to Goa follows Sequeira's meetings with union power minister Sushil Kumar Shinde and union minister of state for power Bharat Solanki in Delhi. Sequeira said he had demanded 100 MW but was sanctioned 50MW. Of this, 25MW will flow from the Kawas and Gandhar power generating stations of Gujarat and 25MW will flow from a power station in Chhattisgarh.
The power minister also announced that the Bureau of Energy Efficiency, a division of the Union Power Ministry, has agreed to sanction four CFL bulbs for every domestic connection in Goa, which has 4.5 lakh domestic connections. Each CFL bulb will be 15W and will be given at a cost of only Rs 15. The market price of a 15W CFL bulb is around Rs 130. The only condition is that the recipient of the CLF bulbs will have to return his existing incandescent bulbs. There is no financial burden on the state due to this, Sequeira said.
About 20 lakh incandescent bulbs will need to be changed under this scheme and their replacement with CFL bulbs will save Goa about 20MW of power, Sequeira said.
When asked whether Goa had plans to generate its own power, Sequeira said he has demanded two gas-based power stations in Goa. Sequeira's demand for gas-based power generation stations stems from the Centre's approval for extending the Dhabol-Bangalore gas pipeline to Goa by tapping it at Gokak in Karnataka. The gas pipeline is expected to reach Goa by 2013. He said some years back, the Centre had sanctioned Goa two 250MW coal-based power generating stations, but these were dropped due to environmental concerns.
Sequeira also announced that the transformer at the Curti sub-station, which was recently damaged due to a lightning strike, has been repaired and is now fully functional. He said the department is test charging the new sub-station at Amona which will become operational shortly. "So I think Goa will be comfortable," he said.