(This story originally appeared in on Apr 26, 2017)

NEW DELHI: UP is powering ahead — literally — to shed blackouts within a month of the BJP taking over the reins, moving from perennially running short of electricity to 'zero-shortage' in April even after a 20% rise in consumption during this period.According to the National Load Despatch Centre data for power transactions made by the state utility in the March-April period, daily energy consumption increasing from 265 MU (million units) per day to 320 MU in the last one month.For a state known for long blackouts, the sharp rise in consumption should have made the outages longer. But data indicates otherwise, with no gap between demand and supply position for nearly all of the period under review.This is borne out by the fact that the maximum demand met by the state utility during this period increased from 11,900 MW (mega watt) in early March to nearly 16,000 MW at present, showing no shortage during this period.Does this mean there's no blackout? Well, not exactly. A random survey of apartment blocks in Ghaziabad and Noida indicate they are having to run the backup generators for lesser time than before as the outages have become shorter whenever and wherever they are happening."Earlier the generator could be running for up to 7-8 hours. Nowadays, the runtime has come down to an average of two hours," Raman Thakur, estate supervisor at one of the prime housing so cieties in Ghaziabad's Kaushambi area told TOI.State power officials said supply is snapped mainly due to "local" issues such as for repairing of main distribution lines, a snapped wire or a blown transformer and not for want of electricity.The turnaround has come because of two reasons. One, the state has become a major buyer of power, taking advantage of lower prices on electricity exchanges as well as bilateral deals. The state is buying 1,500 MW through exchanges and bilateral deals, taking advantage of lower prices. This is in sharp contrast to the situation prevailing a month before when the state had, as one industry executive described, "an occasional or intermittent presence on the exchanges and bought not even half of its present shopping".Two, several transmission links have come on stream, especially in western UP , improving availability from new generation capacities commissioned in recent times.