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Approximately 85% of power in Nagaland is availed by domestic consumers which leaves the remainder for commercial or industrial consumers. According to estimates, the demand for power by 2021 is going to increase to around 450 MW, an increase of around 100 MW from the previous years. In the previous years, the state’s four power projects together generated around 89.09 MW. On its part the state government spends nearly Rs.300 crore to buy power to meet the shortfall. However, the revenue receipts show a dismally low collection of hardly Rs.140 to Rs.150 crore annually from government data. In order to reduce this huge loss in revenue, the power department had been trying to incorporate state-of-the-art technology to improve transmission, generation and distribution sector to enhance revenue collections. In the past several years, it was almost a regular feature of the department to announce loss amounting to approximately over Rs.100 crore annually. On the other hand, there have been numerous complaints about consumers being handed inflated bills. This is highlighted when consumers believe they are being billed for non-supply of power and blamed it on improper metering or inefficiency. The department has been facing the same crisis every year and despite efforts to reduce the woes of consumers through various administrative decisions and technical solutions, the situation has not changed. Shortage of power resulting in load shedding has always been blamed on transmission loss including theft and pilferage. The accumulated total loss is equivalent to approximately 40MW to 50MW out of the total power that the state receives. When the power loss in Nagaland is almost 50% and double the national average, it calls for serious attention of the department as to why this abnormal figure continues to hinder efficiency in the system of transmission and supply. The department has been on the job in making all efforts to streamline the system but despite all these, the consumers are still plagued with regular power interruptions that last as long as one hour or more. These have remained a feature even during monsoon months when generation of hydro electric power is expected to be at their peak. The main cause is attributed to power loss due to theft\/pilferage and non-payment of power bills. The problem of long hours of load shedding has totally negated the very concept of economic development since business without power means losses. Even sensitive equipments are damaged due to power fluctuations and has caused huge losses to business, especially storage and small units that are wholly dependent on power supply. Generators are meant as standby but in the prevailing circumstances, they have become the mainstay as power from the department, has become the standby. Both loss of power in transmission and revenue are yet to be tackled. However, the loss of revenue is non-technical and which should be addressed. The option of providing pre-paid meters may serve the department with regard to revenue collection even if consumers cry foul over having to pay a high price. The department has been grappling with efforts at building adequate capacities in generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure to attain energy security and handling and to achieve 24×7 power for all by 2021. Power in theory and powerless in practise seems to be the prescription for the suffering power consumers of Nagaland and this needs to be addressed urgently.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Low energy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[685],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-209434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209434\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}