State lacks infrastructure, pumping more electricity won’t solve power crisis

The allocation of additional electricity to Jammu and Kashmir by the union power ministry is unlikely to address the ongoing power crisis in Kashmir as the state doesn’t have required infrastructure to handle the energy quota, an official said on Wednesday.
The official, well versed with the electricity system in Kashmir, said: “Not to talk of additional power, we don’t have the required grid capacity and transmission infrastructure either in Jammu or Kashmir to handle the present power demand. The state won’t benefit from this additional allocation because we are stretching our system to maximum already.”
The union power ministry on November 16 issued a statement that in view of increase in power requirement in Jammu and Kashmir that happens normally during winter, it has allocated 74 percent power—792 MW of 1071 MW—from unallocated power pool of the northern region to the state. This allocation, the statement said, was made from unallocated power share of 15 percent to 20 percent that remains with the union government.
The official said that while the state’s unrestricted power demand is more than 2700 MW, the Power department has infrastructure capacity in terms of power grids and transmission system at 220 kV to handle only around 1900 MW.
“We are not able to handle more than 1900 MW because of the system constraints. That is why the Power department enforces prolonged and unscheduled cuts apart from scheduled curtailment to manage the system which has already been stretched to the maximum,” said the official.
The additional allocation could have helped if the Power department had required infrastructure to use it, the official said.
“We have capacity constraint at 220kV level and even at distribution level and because of these constraints this additional allocation of power won’t help us,” the official said.
A source said that even if the state is able to transfer the allocated power at 400 kV transmission line from outside, there was no capacity at state level to handle it.
However neither Kumar nor the power minister responded to the calls from this newspaper later.