As per the data available with State Energy Department, the villages in the districts of Sambalpur, Sonepur, Bargarh, Sundargarh, Deogarh, Jharsuguda, Nuapada, Kalahandi and Bolangir have no access to power supply for a high of 5-long hours in a day.
In contrast, rural areas in the districts of Mayurbhanj, Balasore, Jajpur, Keonjhar and Bhadrak could draw power supply for around 20 hours only. Rural areas in rest of the districts in the State failed to have power supply for at least 2-hours every day.
WESCO, which supplies power to districts like Sambalpur, Sonepur, Bargarh, Sundargarh, Deogarh, Jharsuguda, Nuapada, Kalahandi and Bolangir, has the worst record in power outages.
For instance, in August, power outage (unscheduled) duration under WESCO stood at a whopping nearly 7 hours. NESCO followed with outages for 5 hours, CESU with nearly 4 hours and SOUTHCO with over 3 hours.
However, when it comes to frequency of power outages, CESU tops the list with an average number of around 66 times, means at least two outages every day. NESCO followed with nearly 60 times. SOUTHCO with number of outages at 34 emerged as the best performer in State.
As the outages were recorded at the 11 KV feeder lines, the brunt was borne by the residents.
While experts blame the poor transmission network and load on substation for such high outages, the energy department has plans to ensure uninterrupted power supply by 2021.
A top official in the State Energy department conceded the fact but informed that work is in progress for completion of 12 new transmission lines under all the discom areas, and they are scheduled to be commissioned in year 2020. Similarly, land for setting up 16 more new substations have been completed. The commissioning will take place likely by the end of the year, he added.
When last year poor hydropower generation was behind the power crisis in winter, the situation is not so this winter.
The hydropower generating reservoirs in the State like Hirakud, Rengali, Upper Indravati and Upper Kolab currently have a storage position, which is higher than the average storage position of last 10-years.
The storage position of Hirakud at present is 4.778 BCM (Billion Cubic Metres) vis-a-vis last year's position of 3.94 BCM and 10-year average level of 4.59 BCM. Similar is the scenario for Upper Indravati, Upper Kolab and Rengali. The current position is much higher than last 10-years average level.
But as per the Load Generation Balance Report (LGBR) 2019-20, Odisha will witness a peak deficit of around 2.8 per cent or 139 MW in the month of December 2019. However, it forecasts that the State will not see any peak deficit during the span of January to March 2020.
Significantly, the report predicts Odisha going to witness high energy deficit in the coming months from December 2019 to March 2020. It observed that Odisha will record an energy deficit of 20 per cent in December 2019, 15.4 per cent in January, 11.1 per cent in February and 14.5 per cent in March 2020, respectively.
The energy crunch the State will be experiencing during the period Dec 2019 - March 2020 will be ranging from 510 million units (MU) to 423 MU, the report added.
Though such high energy crunch during the months of Dec 2019 - Mar 2020 will not result in any power cuts, rather, the fallout will be felt on the rural electrification programme under the Soubhagya Yojana. Power supply to agriculture and Industries may also witness disruptions, experts observed.
Since the current month of December is predicted to witness 139 MW peak deficit, this will impact the power supply scenario in the State and power cuts may be resorted to meet the deficit, they added.
Even as LGBR's prediction didn't see any peak deficit in Odisha for Jan - Mar 2020, the forecast could go haywire as its peak demand prediction for the last fiscal (2018-19) had been around 21 per cent less than the actual peak demand.