The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Power supply woes to end

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Thursday, Jul 03, 2008
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Power supply woes to end

Special Correspondent

BANGALORE: The power transmission capacity of Bangalore will increase by about 1,000 MW by March 2009 when the ongoing work on 25 substations is completed.

Minister for Energy K.S. Eshwarappa told presspersons here on Wednesday after inspecting the work on some of these substations being taken up at a cost of Rs. 920 crore that such an increase in the capacity of the power network would improve the quality of power supply in Bangalore and reduce the interruptions in supply to a large extent.

With this increase in the capacity of the power network, the city’s power infrastructure would be in a position to handle the growth in demand for the next five years, the Minister said.

At present, Bangalore used about 21 million units of power a day. However, the demand was growing at the rate of 17 per cent a year. The augmentation of the capacity of the power network would get a boost in three months itself when four of the above substations were commissioned, he said. The construction of 25 substations which were at different stages included eight substations with a capacity of 220 kV and 17 with a capacity of 66 kV.

The Minister alleged that there was a delay of about six months in the implementation of these works by the previous Government which had initiated this project. Various factors including the delay in getting clearance from the then Bangalore Mahanagara Palike for road cutting, the delay in getting the land as well as the cables, was responsible for the tardy work on these substations, he alleged.

He said the work on four of the 220-kV substations would be completed within 90 days while the remaining substations would be commissioned by March 2009. These four sub-stations were coming up at Anand Rao Circle, HAL, NIMHANS and Residency Road.

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