A farmer left his paddy field affected by shortage of water for irrigation for cattle grazing in Nalgonda district.
| Photo Credit: Nagara Gopal
Rising temperatures and increasing consumption by all categories of consumers, the energy use in Telangana has scaled a new high on Thursday, March 7 as it clocked 303.79 million units, surpassing the previous highest of 303.43 million units recorded on March 3 last year.
The rise in consumption is driven by the agriculture sector with most of the crops raised in the ongoing rabi (yasangi) season depending on groundwater drawal following deficit inflows into all the reservoirs and tanks in the Krishna Basin, although the comparative position in the Godavari Basin is slightly better.
Officials in the power utilities explained that the energy consumption was set to increase further in the coming weeks as the most of the standing crops requiring higher volume of groundwater drawal as the approach harvesting stage. They explained that peak load of power on the transmission system was recorded at 15,403 megawatt on March 6, the second highest ever after 15,497 MW clocked on March 30 last year.
They stated that the peak load of power was clocked beyond 15,400 MW on Friday (March 8) indicating that it is set to cross the 16,000 MW barrier in March itself. The authorities stated that the utilities were all prepared to handle and meet any load with consumption in the GHMC area (domestic, commercial and industrial) going up steadily.
Authorities in the Agriculture Department stated that cultivation of Rabi crops had reached about 66.3 lakh acres as on March 6 excluding horticultural crops including vegetables and short term fruit crops against 73.09 lakh acres cultivated by the same date last year. The crops cultivated are mostly water-intensive this season, including paddy transplanted in 50.84 lakh acres.
Other crops raised such as maize (6.48 lakh acres), bengal gram (2.55 lakh), jowar (2.28 lakh), groundnut (2.09 lakh acres) and others also need wetting/irrigation frequently. Except in Khammam and Wanaparthy districts, the cultivation of Rabi crops has been either excess than the normal coverage or near normal extent.
In Sangareddy, Medak, Medchal-Malkajigiri, Yadadri-Bhuvanagiri and Siddipet district, the cultivation has been higher by 50% to 75% above the normal extent. During the last three months (December 2023-February 2024) period, the groundwater table has registered a sharp decline of 1.9 metres. During the corresponding period last year (December 2022-February 2023) the decline was slightly higher at 2.02 metres.
