Gujarat ready to give power, wants cheaper fuel

Ahmedabad: As the country battled its worse power outage ever, the state of Gujarat seemed unaffected. The state has been producing surplus electricity for several years, and has now offered a deal for more power to the national grid in exchange for cheaper petrol.

Amid the darkness a light shines through. As the three grids shut down North Eastern, Eastern and Northern India, Gujarat alone stood proud. For years now, the state has been able to generate surplus electricity, no mean achievement, given the huge power deficit across the country. Gujarat would have in fact generated another 2000 megawatts, but for the shortage of coal to fire its plants.

Saurabh Patel, Energy Minister, Gujarat, says, "Today, Gujarat can give 2000 MW of power to the northern states if the centre gives us support. That is the only short term solution that I see."

For people like Gitaben Nayee in Raayasan village near Gandhinagar, the 24-hour power supply means her family can operate appliances any time.

Gitaben Nayi, a Raaysan Village resident, says “Earlier, the electricity used to go off often and we had to draw water manually. Now everything is okay."

In the past decade alone, over 8000 MW of electricity has been generated in Gujarat. It's a huge achievement, given that 8000 MW of power was generated between 1961 and 2002.

The generation capacity in Gujarat today is 15,906 MW, higher than the average requirement of about 12,000 MW electricity.

During 2011-12, Gujarat added 600 Megawatts of solar generation capacity while in the entire country it was just 110 MW.

With its next target of 18000 megawatts by December, Gujarat clearly has shown the way forward.

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