The unbundling of the Punjab State Electricity Board (PSEB) helps the Punjab government to reduce transmission and distribution losses. The new outfit Punjab State Power Corporation Limited has been making big strides in the post-unbundling period.

KD Chaudhri, CMD, PSPCL told to media that “the transmission and distribution (T&D) losses of the company have reduced from 20% to 18% in 2010-11 and the metered sale has also gone up by 2.5% during this period accruing savings of Rs. 350 crore. This increase in metered sale has been achieved despite many high end consumers opting for open access thereby causing revenue loss to PSPC”.

Chaudhri said “new power generation projects of Rajpura, Talwandi Sabo and GVK are on schedule and will start generation from September 2012 onwards. Once these projects are commissioned, Punjab will be able to meet its total Power requirement from its own projects. In addition to these projects, much generation capacity has been planned under MoU route to make Punjab a power surplus state in the near future”.

Giving an overview of the distribution infrastructure development, he informed that almost all tubewell feeders have been separated so as to ensure round the clock power supply to all villages in Punjab. All rural water supply schemes getting supply from tube well feeders have been connected to urban pattern supply feeders to provide round the clock drinking water supply in the villages. About 1,100 over-loaded 11KV feeders and 30,000 over-loaded distribution transformers in the urban and rural areas have been de-loaded to ensure quality & uninterrupted supply to consumers.