Ah! excuses, excuses, excuses! That's a typical bureaucratic answer!
The question is:
WTF are they doing about it? Sweet fu@k all! Period! Heck,
wide area transmission grids now span across countries and even large portions of continents, and our yahoos can't transmit to and within comparatively tiny Tamil Nadu? The truth is our bureaucrats, politicians and TNEB honchos are nothing but a bunch of poodle fakers getting fat salaries for doing zilch!
Further, if you're talking about "power transmission losses due to distance", how about Gujarat for example? It is a power surplus state now. With installed generation capacity of over 18,900 Mw from thermal sources alone, Gujarat is the largest power generating state in the country. And, it aims to add 10,000 Mw in the next five years, to touch the 30,000 Mw generation capacity mark by 2017. No "power transmission losses due to distance" there?
And Tamil Nadu? Oh man, it's so embarrassing, I can't even put out the figures here!!
It sucks!