Feeder separation: Farmers to get fixed 10-hour power supply for tubewells
Currently, power supply to agricultural and domestic consumers is made through common feeders because of which fubewells also get electricity supply for longer hours resulting in wastage of power by farmers and overloading of system at peak time.
Lucknow: Farmers in Uttar Pradesh may soon start getting power supply for fixed 10 hours in the daytime to operate their tubewells, once all the feeders in the state are segregated into agricultural and domestic categories, dedicating agricultural feeders to the irrigation pump sets.

The UP Power Corporation Ltd (UPPCL), according to the people in the know of things, has asked discoms to necessarily separate all the remaining feeders by April 15.
Currently, power supply to agricultural and domestic consumers is made through common feeders because of which fubewells also get electricity supply for longer hours resulting in wastage of power by farmers and overloading of system at peak time.
Under the feeder separation scheme being funded by the Centre, agricultural consumers are supposed to get quality power only for 8-10 hours a day instead of being served continuously.
More than 2,800 of the total 4,264 feeders in UP have already been separated and around 1,500 feeders, 151 in Varanasi discom, 112 in Lucknow discom, 218 in in Agra discom and 577 in Meerut discom are yet to be segregated. The remaining feeders are being segregated under the Centre’s new and ongoing Revamped Distribution Sector Scheme (RDSS).
“UPPCL chairman Ashish Kumar Goyel told discoms to give top priority to feeder separation work under the RDSS, segregating all the feeders by April 15,” a senior UPPCL official said. “The deadline is, however, not practical as it may take more time for the work to be completed,” he added.
The segregation feeders, he said, would make it possible to provide electricity to farmers for limited hours in the day to meet their irrigation requirement. “Doing so will enable the UPPCL to shift the peak load to daytime and also save farmers from snakebite incidents they often encounter because of irrigating their fields in the night,” the official pointed out.
In UP, there are 14.60 lakh agricultural tubewells and they together consume over 20% of the state’s electricity, surpassing industries and ranking as the second-biggest power guzzler after the domestic sector in the state. The UP government has announced free power for them with effect from April 2023.
