amaravati anticipating steep hike in demand the energy department is gearing up to tackle the situation during the summer season the power consumption trends have already put the authorities on high alert as the demand is fast going up the sudden spike in the power consumption even before the mercury level started going up has made the authorities revise their calculations and ready a new blueprint sources said that the energy department is anticipating that the peak demand might touch an alltime high of 250 mu per day during april and it might further go up in may we are fully geared up to tackle the summer demand chief minister ys jagan mohan reddy has already directed us to ensure that there should not be any power holidaysshutdowns in the coming summer accordingly we are readying the action plan special chief secretary energy k vijayanand toldtoigiving uninterrupted power supply to all the sectors in the coming summer is particularly crucial for the ruling ysrc as it would be facing the general elections next year the political costs would be very heavy for the ysrc if the state faced power crisis for another year as the state reeled under power holidays and shutdowns due to the unavailability of power in the exchanges even to procure this has crippled the operations of the industries and also commercial outlets the ruling ysrc faced criticism for failing to manage the situation despite the state government claiming that steep increase in the demand was the reason for power holidays during last year principal opposition tdp stepped up the campaign saying ap was power surplus during naidus regime it attributed the ysrc governments decision to snap the ppas with private developers for the power crisis in the state subsequently the situation eased only around midmay when the consumption from the agriculture sector had come down taking a serious note of the experiences faced during the last year the energy department has started taking measurements to prevent similar power outages in the state we have signed mous for power purchase at just 79 per unit against 12 spent last year said vijayanand he explained that operation of 800 mw unit at krishnapatnam and another 500mw from sembcorp plant in nellore would ease the situation he said that commercial demand would be around 18 per cent and industries would take 205 per cent from the total demand due to increased industrial activity he said that they have anticipated about 50mu demand for the agriculture sector in april