Powering north and east for growth
The Times of India outlines the plans to augment power supply to these two parts of the city


After having conquered the south, the waves of corporate growth are now sweeping across the north and eastern parts of Bangalore. But the issue is, are these areas equipped to handle growth in terms of interminable and quality power supply? State power bodies like KPTCL and Bescom (Bangalore Electricity Supply Company) say, they are, in fact, gearing up to augment power transmission and distribution activities to cater to the huge corporate and retail demand expected from these two growth quarters.

KPTCL, Managing Director, Bharatlal Meena says, "we foresee huge demand for power emerging from these areas. We have been initiating a lot of measures, in advance, to provide for growth in these locations. Continuous power supply is the life blood of business houses and therefore KPTCL will do whatever needed to attend to the existing power cries".

By the way, the State has a mandate to sink in a whooping Rs 1,000 crores to improve the power situation in the city, by end of this fiscal. State power officials say this would give a complete facelift to the power transmission and distribution scenario in the city

This would also mean the city skylines would now spot more power structures. V M Chandre Gowda, Director (Transmission) KPTCL says, Bangalore would add eight new 220 KV stations by end of calendar 2006, to eight such existing stations. Each one of these stations would incur a cost of over Rs 100 crores. "Five of these 220 KV stations are exclusively meant for the east and northern parts of the city. That means the belt alone will have a total of eight such stations", he said. These stations will come up near HAL factory, Nagarathnapura, Electronic City, Residency Road and HBR Layout at Arkavati. Each of these stations would consume three to four acres of open land.

In addition, around three dozen 66 KV stations are expected to be up and running in the next 18 months. "East and northern parts of Bangalore will be the key beneficiaries of these stations with as much as 75 percent of the power load exclusively diverted to these areas", he adds. At present, Bangalore has three 400 KV stations, eight 220 KV stations and 51 sub-stations of 66 KV each that feed the power needs of 23 lakh consumers. The power bodies have already replaced or installed over 2,500 transformers across the city while another 500 transformers are expected to come up by December. This, however, has been a huge growth. For instance, the city had only 7,000 transformers in 1999 and the number is over 15,000 now.

A lot of activities are happening on the supply front as well. Bescom has undertaken a 616 km 11 KV underground cabling work at an investment of Rs 25 crores. The company has already laid 500 km of cables, each km costing it Rs 8 lakhs. Meanwhile, an 11 KV 451 km overhead cable work is nearing completion in the city. It was in 2002 that Bescom took over the power distribution responsibility from KPTCL in six districts - Bangalore Urban, Bangalore Rural, Kolar, Tumkur, Chitradurga and Davangere. Today, Bescom covers an area of 41,092 sq km with a population of over 1.4 crores. In Bangalore alone it has a consumer base of 51.47 lakhs.

As per industry estimates, by the year 2011-12, Bangalore's peak load demand would rise upto 2,500 MW from the 1,300 MW currently.