One Mysore being added to Bruhat Blore every year!

One Mysore being added to Bruhat Blore every year!
By K N Reddy, DH News Service, Bangalore:
According to Bangalore Electricity Supply Company officials, every year nearly two lakh consumers are added to the City, which at present has a total of 27.7 lakh consumers.

The annual increase in the number of power consumers in Bruhat Bangalore is as much as the total number of consumers in Mysore city!

According to Bangalore Electricity Supply Company officials, every year nearly two lakh consumers are added to the City, which at present has a total of 27.7 lakh consumers.

“If the increase in the number of consumers in the newly added BBMP areas is also taken into consideration, the annual growth would be roughly the same as the total number of consumers in Mys-ore city, which has a total of 3.31 lakh consumers.

In other words, in terms of number of consumers, “one Mysore city will be added to the BBMP area every year,” as a senior Bescom official told Deccan Herald.

In addition to these, at least half a dozen townships are coming up around Bangalore and one also has to reckon with mega projects like Metro rail and the international airport.

The rise in the number of customers — as well in the amount of power used — since 2002-03 has been unprecedented. While the number of users has shot up by 40 per cent, consumption has gone up by a whopping 79 per cent in the last five years.

Highest in India?
Says Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation Ltd Director and in-charge MD of Bescom V M Chandre Gowda, “While consumption in the City had an annual growth of 5-6 per cent between 2001 and 2005, it has been 17 per cent in the past couple of years. If the trend holds, the peak load (1536 mw today) will almost double within the next five years. Something you won’t see anywhere else in India.”

Given the pace at which the City has grown in the last few years, Bescom and KPTCL find it an uphill task of supplying quality power though large-scale system improvement works undertaken during 1998-2002 have helped in a big way.

There are 1,04,000 distribution transformers (DTCs) in the City, 68 per cent of which have been added in the last four-five years, says Mr Gowda.

More kv stations
There are now seven 220-kv stations and 40 66-kv stations. Six more 220-kv stations are being set up at Anand Rao Circle, Ni-mhans, HAL, Residency Road, Sarjapur and Whitefield areas by the KPTCL.
Except the one at Residency Road, to be commissioned by December 2008, the remaining five would be operational by June 2008. As many as 29 66-kv stations are also being set up for the City alone.
According to Mr Gowda, “there is no major problem” in the whole of the metropolitan region, barring Koramangala, Austin Town, Wilson Garden Area, Shantinagar, Ashok Nagar, Yelahanka, Pottery Road and Banaswadi, “where there is some constraint with regard to power supply.”