Chief Minister Conrad Sangma on Tuesday assured that the state Government will do away with power swapping with one of the major partners on September 30.
Talking to reporters in Shillong, Chief Minister Sangma said almost 4 Million units of Power is generated in the state today; however, 2 million units are being paid back to the power generation companies as part of the power swapping agreement.
“There was power swapping arrangement was made earlier where units were swapped, so when we were generating high during seasons like now, we were giving power to certain other providers in other states and other companies and we were taking back power from them in the months of December, January, February, March, April when we are not having not enough rain, and hence that basic Power swapping arrangements made is still being given to those people as we speak,” Sangma said.
Explaining further, the Chief Minister said, “Now we have changed that model, now we have tied up with NTPC and MoU is actually now to arrange this power swapping or power management portfolio of ours so that we don’t have to go into this extreme kind of power swapping scenario where we are able to manage power much better. Therefore, the expertise of NTPC, their manpower, their entire production capacity, the entire network throughout the country and internationally will allow us to manage things in a better manner.”
“We are still giving power swapping till now but that will end on 30th of September,” he added.
The Chief Minister further said all the units of the power supply today are functioning.
Stating that the Meghalaya Govt is still supporting Meghalaya Energy Corporation Limited (MeEC) with 100s of crores of financial support, he said the state Government continues to buy power for running expenditures because revenue generation is not enough by the department.
With Meghalaya experiencing longest loadshedding, he said that the loadshedding will continue as of now, he said, “…..rather than having 8-9 hours of loadshedding in the lean period, it is better to have 1 or 2 hours throughout the year.”
“We have maintained that we will continue the loadshedding for 2 to three hours at the night time because there is not so much inconvenience to the people,” he added.
“Because of the model that we have adopted of using the power that we have and selling it in the market today we are actually earning positive revenue out of that and MeECL is actually seeing the net amount of revenue that we earn from purchase and sell of power is first time positive in many years,” he said adding, “MeECL is earning by selling power which stored in Umiam reservoir,” the CM said.