LEH, 28 October 2021: Secretary Power & NRE, UT Ladakh, Ravinder Kumar chaired a meeting at Civil Secretariat Leh to discuss and review the energy requirements of UT Ladakh.

During the meeting, Secretary Power & NRE, Ladakh directed the concerned officers to make an energy plan for the next 10-15 years keeping in mind the present energy scenario, future energy demand and supply scenario in the UT down the line of 10-15 years minimum. 

Secretary stressed upon various factors such as the introduction of e-vehicles, increase in power demand in urban and rural areas due to reliable power availability, sources to meet the demands in line with Carbon Neutrality, augmentation in transmission capacity in and out of UT, Short term and long-term strategies to meet the future demands. The Secretary instructed the SECI to engage consultants to review the actual power demand in Ladakh and also asked SECI to assure that the 50MW Solar Plant at Taru will be ready to deliver power by October 2022.

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Additional CEO, RECPDCL submitted that the distribution infrastructure of the UT needs to be upgraded/augmented in line with the future increase in power demand. RECPDCL is engaged as a handholding agency to PDD Ladakh as well as PMA for the preparation of DPR and action plan for the Revamped Distribution Sector Scheme. He asked RECPDCL to depute manpower for DPR Preparation based on the actual ground situation to meet the actual infrastructure demands, Addl. CEO, RECPDCL confirmed the same and committed to deploying manpower immediately. 

Chief Engineer, PDD Ladakh also highlighted some of the failures in materials erected under various CSS such as V-cross arm breakage, Top pin insulator failure, bending of pole top portion, LA failures etc. and Addl. CEO was asked to submit a report on these failures and future remedial. 

General Manager, SLTS/RE Ladakh submitted that the present SLTS has a power transmission capacity of approximately 150 MW and he informed that PGCIL has taken up the matter for providing stability of the line by providing 15KMs of Cabling at Zojila portion and necessary reactors at Alustang. For augmentation of the transmission capacity of the Line, replacing the existing ASCR conductor with HTLS conductor can be taken up. 

Additionally, PD LREDA submitted that at present all the solar street lightings other than in urban areas are required to be accounted for energy consumption and needs to be metered.

Secretary Power, Ravinder directed RECPDCL to prepare a comprehensive report on the Energy scenario of Ladakh based on inputs from all the stakeholders.

The meeting was attended by SS Gupta, Additional CEO RECPDCL; G A Mir, Chief Engineer PDD Ladakh; Shafat Ahmad, GM PGCIL; Tsewang Paljor, SE PDD; Chosying Dorjey, PD LREDA; Kacho Ahmed PD KREDA; Debajyoti Bordoloi, Sr Manager, SECI and other officials of the PDD department were also present.