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2-Day Power Holiday for HT Industries

  • High Tension (HT) industrial consumers in the State will face a power holiday on Sundays in addition to the one-day power holiday to be enforced on given days in a week. The Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation has divided the State into six regions and specified one-day holiday for each region. This will come into force from Thursday (March 1) and the scheme will cover days from Monday to Saturday. This is applicable to HT, Low Tension (LT) and LT Current Transformer (LTCT) industrial services.Besides, Sunday would have to be holiday for the HT industries of all regions, according to a circular issued by the office of Chief Engineer (Commercial) of the TANGEDCO on Saturday.
  • Those exempted from the power holiday scheme are printing facilities for newspapers, weekly, fortnightly and monthly magazines, telephone exchanges, milk chilling and processing plants, Port Trust, defence production units, defence service and establishments.On power holidays, the industries will limit the drawal of power from the grid to less than or equal to 10 per cent of the quota demand or sanctioned load.Those units coming under the purview of power holiday would be inspected and the Corporation will take action against those operating the units on power holidays, according to an official of the TANGEDCO in Coimbatore.
  • For HT industries, the maximum demand will be reset and excess demand charges and excess energy charges will be levied on consumers found exceeding the quota fixed during the power holiday period. In the case of LTCT and LT industrial services which violate the scheme, levy of excess demand and excess energy charges will be imposed on the energy consumed during the power holiday period by taking the average energy consumed a day from the date of imposing the holiday to the date of violation. The levy of excess demand and energy charges will be graded, depending upon the number of times of violation committed by the given industrial unit. The circular mentioned that the TANGEDCO would approach the Tamil Nadu Electricity Regulatory Commission for disconnection and levy of penalty for violation.
  • Reacting to the TANGEDCO's move, M.R. Rajendran, president of Kappalur Industrial Estate Manufacturers' Association in Madurai, said combined with the daily four-hour load shedding and the peak-hour restrictions of four hours between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m., this measure would negate any benefit the new system might provide.

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