T’puram: CM V D Satheesan said govt would explore short- and long-term options to address the rising power shortage in state. He said a meeting would be held on Thursday to chart out the future course of action. Satheesan said all states were facing power shortage and they were depending on restrictions to tide over the crisis. He said the significant spike in consumption and non-availability of power nationally contributed to the crisis, which he said KSEB could neither anticipate nor address.Satheesan said the crisis may end by Oct with new power purchase agreements. He repeated his argument that LDF govt scrapping long-term power purchase pacts is the single largest factor for the crisis. He said Keralam was trying to manage the power shortage without incurring a huge additional financial burden.TN bought power at Rs 38/unit a day ago. But we turned down the option to buy round-the-clock power at Rs 30/unit. We have enough power during the day and buying such high-cost power is not feasible. We are trying to strike a balance and manage the situation, he said, adding that Keralam may get an additional allocation of 150MW power from a nuclear power station.
