Seminar on power conservation held in city

Delivering the Opening Address, Chief Minister, Dr Mukul M Sangma while welcoming the participants of the seminar from different parts of the country expressed his appreciation to GOC 101 for having initiated the important seminar in Shillong. “We are all collectively committed to deal with the challenges of global warming and its effects. As a nation and as global citizens it is important for all to connect with this shared objective,” he said. He said that conservation of energy has been an issue and conservation of energy techniques is what is needed.

He added that the Government of India has come up with a very vibrant Electricity Act 2003 to address this concern of tapping the resources to take care of the energy needs all across the nation. “In sync with this the government of Meghalaya came up with a policy and the state government has clearly substantiated its intent of ensuring that Meghalaya will look at all the energy requirement to be met from renewable sources even as today Meghalaya is dependent on hydro electricity power projects”, he said.

Sangma also informed that in order to tap other potential sites to further generate power the state has been trying to reach out to private investors. He further said that in energy conservation the challenge lies with the mind set and the way of life of the people. “For a government especially the state government the challenge is always how to look at the cross subsidizing of the tariff for the consumers and how energy saving mechanism can enable us to enable us to sell the saved energy to industries at a tariff to cross subsidize the tariff passed on to the domestic consumers”, said Dr Sangma.

The Chief Minister added that the government has embarked upon stand alone projects for villages and habitations which are far away from the generating stations. The mode of transmission and distribution is also crucial for saving energy he said. He said that the whole of aggregate commercial and technical losses in transmission and distribution of energy remains a challenge for the government.

“How this challenge can be addressed by adopting techniques and by policy interventions is something which I am sure will emanate from this kind of seminar,” said Sangma.

Sangma urged to utilize the knowledge that will be derived from the seminar and to look at new technology that can replace the conventional power generation methods to increase the efficiency of power generation and consumption to make energy sustainable and environment friendly.

Earlier giving the Welcome Address, GOC 101 Area, Lieutenant General, Dipender Singh Ahuja said the armed forces in India have taken major initiatives towards energy conservation and at Shillong a special drive has been undertaken to convert all luminaries into LED. He informed that in the backdrop of the concerns in power and energy the seminar is an effort on spearheading and spreading the dictum, Energy Conserved is Energy Produced. Lt General, Ahuja also said that the seminar will provide a platform for discussing new methods for energy conservation and drawing the roadmap towards a clean environment.

The Chief Minister also released a commemorative souvenir during the occasion.

The technical sessions included discussion on Enhanced Production and Reduced Consumption of Energy and Conservation of Energy. The panelists comprised of Dr Sukumar Mishra, IIT Delhi, Rajat Chandra Sarmah, Executive Director, NEEPCO, Dr Samrat Paul, NEHU, B L Ram, Advisor to GOI, Dr Praveen Tripathy, IIT, Guwahati, Dr Gayadhar Panda, NIT, Meghalaya, Mukesh Gupta, Director, (E/M), E-in-C Branch and Col Anuj srivastav (Retd).

By Our Reporter