Even as rain lashed the city, people at the energy utility BESCOM are heaving a sigh of relief at having completed one more summer without any major hindrances.
The electricity demand levels for the city have dropped by at least 168 MW on Wednesday, as the scheduled limit for BESCOM was 3,394 MW while the actual drawl was 3,226 MW.
According to Managing Director P Manivannan, the demand has reduced by about 300 MW a day. “Because of the rain, the demand has reduced. We have surplus power now and the only outages are due to technical glitches,” he said.
The State Load Dispatch Centre (SLDC) chart displays that the demand across Karnataka has reduced from 164 million units in April this year, to about 145 million units in the past week.
Remarking on the development, other officials said that the state grid would cross the safe frequency of 50 Hz if everyone continued to draw less power. In fact, the frequency of the grid on Wednesday remained at 49.99 Hz.
According to a source in BESCOM, it is preparing a bank of transformers in rural areas under its jurisdiction to reduce the waiting time for resolution of outages. An official said that this step was being taken based on instructions of the CM who wanted to ensure fast resumption of power supply in rural areas as well.
“Steps like the creation of a transformer bank in order to ensure replacement of transformers within 72 hours are being taken,” a senior official said.
BESCOM is owed a lot of money by other utilities, who purchase power from the utility. Another chunk of money is owed to the company from the Urban Development (UD)and Rural Development (RD) departments who operate streetlights and public utilities.
This has consistently shown up as losses on the BESCOM financial accounts year after year, and it is this issue that will be addressed in the coming months. Estimates put the total receivables at around 1,700 crore from other ESCOMS in state for 2012 and another 1,500 crore from the UD and RD departments for the same year.