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Thursday, Nov 13, 2008
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Power cut: 12 hours in villages, two hours in Bangalore

B.S. Satish Kumar

Bescom issues notification forcing ‘night shift’ on farmers

BANGALORE: People in Bangalore will have to face unscheduled power cuts of two hours a day from November 14 to December-end, while villages being served by Bangalore Electricity Supply Company will get only two hours of power supply during the day. This means that farmers have to work in their fields at night to take care of standing crops.

According to a notification issued by the electricity supply company on Wednesday, villages will go without power for 12 hours a day. During the 12 hours when power is available, there will be six hours of three-phase supply (when irrigation pumpsets can operate) and six hours of single-phase supply (when only domestic lighting and non-motive power can be used).

Single-phase supply

The single-phase power supply will be during the night. While only two hours of the three-phase power supply will be available during the day, the remaining four hours will be at night, at any time between midnight and the early hours.

In Bangalore, the power cut for domestic consumers will be broken into two one-hour schedules, both during the peak hours between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m., and 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. Industries and commercial consumers in Bangalore will bear the brunt for two hours between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m.

Outside of Bangalore, other urban areas under the power company’s jurisdiction will face four-hour power cuts daily.

This crisis is mainly due to the sharp increase in the demand for power and the failure to boost generation capacity. The demand is said to have grown at the rate of 15 per cent to 20 per cent of late. The State’s generation capacity from all sources is 8,425 MW. But the shortage itself is in the range of 1,500 MW to 1,700 MW during the normal period when all the generating units are working. This translates to a shortage of 15 million units to 20 million units a day.

But in real terms, the shortage is greater as the State is not getting its full quota of power from the central generating stations, especially the nuclear and gas-based plants, which have been underperforming because of uranium and gas shortage. This has resulted in reduction in the availability of power by about 400 MW.

Storage at dams

Besides, the storage in the three major hydel reservoirs is only equivalent to about 5,700 million units as against 8,000 million units in the corresponding period last year. So the State has to draw only a minimum amount of hydel resources every day to ensure that there is some storage left till the onset of the monsoon in June.

Bescom is learnt to have arrived at the power cut schedule on the understanding that there will be an availability of about 115 million units of power a day.

According to the plan, the State has to get 30 million units a day from hydel sources, 38 million units from thermal plants, 32 million units from Central generating stations, 5 million units from renewable energy sources and 10 million units from other States. It is going to be a tightrope walk as any minor fall in power supply or technical snag in the generating stations is bound to increase the duration of power cuts.

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