Public moan over load shedding

Public moan over load shedding
Deccan Herald

Almost all parts of the City is experiencing blackout in the last few days, though the Government is claiming that the power situation is “under control” and it will not resort to unscheduled load shedding.

Battered by the erratic power supply of late in the City, Bangaloreans have taken serious exception to Bangalore Electricity Supply Company (Bescom) for its failure to provide quality service.

They believe that something is fishy and that ‘power cuts’ are related to the prevailing power shortage crisis and not “system problem,” as claimed by the utility.

Almost all parts of the City is experiencing blackout in the last few days, though the Government is claiming that the power situation is “under control” and it will not resort to unscheduled load shedding. Ironically, power shut down in many areas had not been scheduled at all.

Some people, especially those into business, have bought generators recently. “I have bought a new generator...I cannot trust Bescom any more...Due to frequent power cuts on Sunday, many tools got damaged at my factory. Bescom should at least announce in advance as to when it is cutting power,” Jagdish Bhatiji, one of the proprietors of an automobile tools manufacturing factory in Yeshwanthpur, said.



‘Make it Mumbai’

Ram Menon, MD, Sujay Condominium Private Limited, took a dig at the chief minister saying that he only talks and actually does nothing.

How can a City like Bangalore face power problem? The Government is talking of making Bangalore a Singapore...Let it make it another Mumbai at least...There is no power cut in Mumbai,” he said.

Bescom gameplan is simple. It wants to save power for future days by cutting the supply on and off now. Even half-an-hour shut down during a peak hour in Bangalore saves lot of energy.

But officially the utility is saying that it is facing technical problems. This is an intelligent way of doing unscheduled load shedding, Vasudha, a housewife and a resident of R P C Layout, charged.

S P Harish, a retired senior vice-president of India Petrochemicals, termed the situation as miserable. “How can there be frequent disruption of power supply without any reason? Bescom must announce its plans in advance and stick to it...Things may turn bad to worse in the coming days,” he warned. Latha, a teacher at Little Kinds school, said there was no power supply for nearly three hours on Monday.

“I could not watch railway budget presentation due to lack of power. At least there should have been a paper notification about the cut,” she complained.



No load shedding

However, Bescom Managing Director Gonal Bhimappa on Monday claimed that there is no load shedding in the City.

When his attention was drawn to large-scale complaints from the public about interruptions in power supply in the City, Mr Bhimappa said this was due to the setting up of power sub-stations and also system improvement works being executed in the City. “At present, work on setting up 30 new 33 kv stations is underway in various parts of the City besides the system improvement works necessitating power cuts,” Mr Bhimappa added.

Stating that the City requires about 22.50 million units of power daily, Mr Bhimappa added that despite the onset of summer, the consumption in the City has more or less remained same. “Hence we are not resorting to load shedding in the urban areas in BESCOM including the garden City,” he asserted.

Meanwhile the power consumption in the State had crossed 130 MUs per day.

According to well placed sources in KPTCL, while the power consumption was 131 MUs on February 17 and 23, it was 130 MUs on February 24.