Telangana becomes nation''s highest power consumer

Naveen S Garewal
Tribune News Service
Hyderabad, November 2

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Telangana has registered the highest consumption of electricity in the country, recording a growth of 14 per cent,Central Electricity Authority (CEA) said on Friday.  

This puts Telangana in the first position across the country for highest consumption of electricity, making the per capita consumption at 1,727 units.

According to chairman and managing director of Telangana Genco and Transco, D Prabhakar Rao, Telangana registered highest growth rate in two divisions stand first in the country.

“By recording 13.62 per cent annual growth rate in power consumption, Telangana topped among the other states. This is 122.91 per cent more than a country’s average growth rate,” the CMD said.

Uttar Pradesh stood second despite its mammoth size compared to Telangana with a growth rate of 11.92 per cent. Andhra Pradesh secured the third position in power consumption with an annual growth of 7.43 per cent.

Andhra Pradesh was the highest consumer of power before the bifurcation of the state in 2014, but the annual growth of power consumption in joint Andhra stood at a mere 6 per cent.

The Power Corporation chief said that in Telangana, the consumption of power stood at 53,017 million units (MU) in 2016-17, which has now gone up to 60,237 MU in 2017-18.

“The increase in power consumption is directly related to the economic activity that includes Information Technology (IT), manufacturing and service industries. The increase in overall availability and negligible outages has also contributed to higher power consumption,” Rao said.

 Similarly, per capita consumption in 2016-17 was 1,551 units while it was increased to 1,727 units with about 12 per cent. At the same time, for the same period, the nationwide power consumption growth rate was just 2.4 per cent.

“Telangana could achieve this due to 24 hour free power supply to agriculture and uninterrupted power supply to both domestic and industrial sectors. Power consumption has increased substantially in commercial and industrial sectors due to quality power supply without any power cuts,” Prabhakar Rao said.