Civic Agenda 3: Bangalore will be electri-city

CIVIC AGENDA-3 BANGALORE ELECTRICITY SUPPLY COMPANY
Bangalore will be electri-city
‘Powerful’ Bescom Claims It Will Do This And Do That
The Times of India

Bangalore: Is the IT City getting a soothing balm for its power woes? It appears so with the government all set to spend a whopping Rs 1,000 crore in the next 15 months on upgrading transmission and distribution network in the city. Official sources claimed Bangalore will see its dream of “uninterrupted’’ and “quality’’ power supply becoming a reality soon.


Power thrust

The Bangalore Electricity Supply Company (Bescom) has already received a grant (25%)-cum-loan (75%) of Rs 338 crore under the Accelerated Power Development & Reform Process (APDRP), a central government initiative.
This money is being used to replace and install around 3,000 transformers in the city. Of these, 2,435 transformers have already been commissioned, and Bescom promises to reach the target by March. On laying cables, Bescom said it has already put in place 444 km of cable, of the targetted 616-km 11-kv lines, at a cost of Rs 25 crore.

Good conductors

Data made available by Bescom shows that the company’s crusade against power theft is paying off. During fiscal 2000-01, power theft accounted for 19.1 per cent of the total revenue and it has come down to 11 per cent at present. “In the last four years, we have done a lot of things to improve our distribution systems. We have more than doubled the number of transformers from 7,000 in 2000 to around 15,000 in 2004, replacing inefficient ones with sleek and more advanced transformers. We have also replaced squirrel conductors with rabbit conductors to help decrease energy losses a n d i m - prove power q u a l i - ty,’’ said V . M . Chandre Gowda, MD in-charge and director (technical).

In power industry parlance, conductors are named after animals; squirrel conductor has a low power carrying capacity of 97 ampere and rabbit conductor is much powerful at 183 ampere.

Anti-power theft crusade

To bring power theft to the bare minimum, Bescom is currently conducting a transformer-wise energy audit across the city. The idea is to analyse the functioning of every transformer, to ascertain energy losses under three categories: less than 5 per cent, between 5 and 10 per cent and above 10 per cent. “This is an easy way to locate faulty meters. We have already replaced 11,000 such meters under this scheme.”

Business target

During the current fiscal, Bescom targets a moderate revenue of Rs 2,600 crore as against Rs 2,300 crore last year. “There was no hike in power tariff this year, at the same time we have made a lot of investments.’’

Current scenario

At present, Bangalore has three 400-kv stations, eight 220-kv stations and 51 66-kv sub-stations that feed the power requirement of 22.5 lakh consumers. As per a recent study, by 2011-12, the city’s peak load demand would have gone up to 2500 MW from the present 1300 MW.

FACELIFT FOR TRANSMISSION

A series of expansion activities are under way in the transmission front as well. By 2006, Bangalore will have six more 220 kv stations, at Anand Rao Circle, NIMHANS, Residency Road, HAL, Arkavathy Layout and Nagarabhavi. Each station would cost over Rs 100 crore, meaning a total investment of over Rs 600 crore.

Similarly, another nine, 66-kv sub-stations will be set up at Kadapisana Halli (near Innovative Multiplex); Residency Road; Deverabeesana Halli (near Bellandur Lake); Anjanapura (near Khoday’s Glass Factory); Telecom Layout near Vinayanagar; Export Promotion Industrial Park (near Whitefield); Peenya, near Wellcast Steel; Byadarahalli on Magadi Road and HBR Layout near Banaswadi. They are scheduled to be commissioned by March 2006. Each one of them would cost around Rs 30 crore.

We are currently in the process of up-‘grading our distribution facilities and the work is expected to be completed by March-‘end. Bescom’s anti-power theft crusade is expected to result in power savings worth over Rs 10 crore a month — Chandre Gowda, MD in-charge and director (Technical)