As Delhi’s burgeoning peak power demand is expected to cross 9,550 Mega Watt (MW) this summer, power distribution companies have also ramped-up the network capacity bydeploying both conventional and innovative solutions to insure uninterrupted supply.

The power demand in BSES areas is expected to cross 7400 MW. Peak power demand in BRPL’ area of South and West Delhi, which had reached 3081 MW during the summers of 2018, is expected to touch around 3200 MW this year. In BYPL’ area of East and Central Delhi, the peak power demand which had reached 1561 MW last year is expected to touch around 1640 MW.

However, Tata Power Delhi Distribution Limited (Tata Power-DDL), the power utility that supplies electricity in North Delhi, has estimated a peak electricity demand of about 2,150 MW this summer. To ensure uninterrupted power supply during summers, Tata Power-DDL had exported power up to 200 MW to the states of Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh during winter of 2018-19 under banking arrangements. The same power shall now be returned by these states to Tata Power-DDL in the summer month of 2019.

“To meet this demand, we have long-term tie-ups amounting to around 2000 MW and other arrangements including up to 500 MW renewable power through power import with other states to ensure regular supply and to take care of any contingency requirements,” said Sanjay Banga, the CEO of Tata Power-DDL.

BSES discoms have undertaken several measures including load balancing at the sub stations, strengthening of the call centre, and deployment of mobile transformers and additional manpower, setting up of quick reaction teams to tackle exigencies, dedicated teams for monitoring of complaints and establishment of war room to review complaints and their quick resolution etc in order to ensure reliable power supply during upcoming summer months. Besides, the discom has also invested substantial resources to strengthen its network.

A senior BSES official said that despite taking all the possible measures, there can be several reasons for power outages, many of which are not in a discom’s control but many of these are easily preventable. “Our analysis has shown that unplanned digging (for road repair or to lay cables/ pipelines) is a major cause for scores of outages across South, West Delhi, East and Central Delhi,” he said, adding that civic agencies, telecom operators and their contractors often inadvertently damage electricity cables while laying cables or pipelines.

Elaborating it further, he said that this not only causes outages (sometimes for long duration), but can also be a serious safety threat for the area residents or passersby, as also for the workers involved in the digging besides causing substantial monetary loss to the discom.

Apart from preventive maintenance, BSES also does extensive predictive checks to identify hot-spots or to pre-determine potential faults and to take remedial measures. Thermo scanning of distribution transformers and feeders is an important tool to identify it. 

To strengthen the distribution network, BSES discoms invested over Rs 800 crore (BRPL ~ Rs 525 crore, BYPL Rs 300 crore) in financial year 2018-2019 and also installed (new) and augmented around 600 distribution transformers, the official said.

Additionally, BSES is also working in tandem with generation and transmission companies to ensure that the entire generation, transmission and distribution system is aligned to meet the summer load, he added. 

For the benefit of the civic agencies and ‘Residents Welfare Associations’ (RWA), BSES has launched ‘Dial n Dig’, a dedicated 24/ 7 helpline number 1800 3000 9707  for South and West Delhi and 39997376 for Central and East Delhi.