With the city likely to see a peak power demand of 6,500 MW this summer, the Aam Aadmi Party Government on Thursday warned discoms of “serious consequences” if they resort to unreasonable excuses for loadshedding and directed them to ensure uninterrupted power supply in the national Capital, especially in slum areas.
The Government’s move comes after reports of loadshedding by discoms in different parts of the Capital, particularly in slums and JJ clusters. Power Department, on the direction of Power Minister Satyendra Jain, has issued a written direction to the CEOs of all the three power distribution companies — Tata Power Delhi Distribution limited (TPDDl), BSES Rajdhani and BSES Yamuna.
“Department has directed discoms to ensure uninterrupted electricity supply across the city with immediate effect,” said a senior official. The Government also said that a serious view will be taken by the Power Department in case the discoms resort to unreasonable excuses for loadshedding.
“Discoms should ensure that consumer helpline numbers are active and these should be adequately reinforced to meet additional calls being received from consumers in the current scenario,” the Power Department has stated.
The discoms have also been directed that in case there are valid and justifiable reasons for loadshedding, then “it should be ensured that such loadshedding at any level of shortage does not exceed one hour at a stretch and should be strictly on rotational basis in different areas and not only in slums and JJ clusters.”
The department has also directed the discoms to widely advertise in advance, through different forms of media, in case they have to resort to loadshedding and “any failure to strictly comply with these directions will lead to serious consequences”.
Apart from that, the discoms have been directed to present contingency plans for rotational loadshedding at different levels of shortage.
Meanwhile, the discoms maintained that they have made adequate arrangement to meet the rising power demands in the Capital. The BSES in a statement said, “Arrangements have been firmed up by BRPl and BYPl to source adequate power to meet the peak power demand of over 34 lakh consumers during the ensuing summer months. These arrangements include long term PPAs and banking arrangements with other States. While BRPl will be getting between 75 MW and 250 MW of power from banking arrangements, BYPl will be getting between 100 MW and 150 MW during the summer months. In case of unforeseen contingencies because of low generation and outages of power plants, the discoms will purchase short-term power from the exchange.”
Peak power demand in BRPl area of South and West Delhi, which had reached 2550 MW during the summers of 2014, is expected to touch around 2,630 MW this year. In BYPl area of East and Central Delhi, the peak power demand had reached 1,496 MW last year. This year, it is expected to touch around 1,520 MW, added a discom official. Besides making arrangements of adequate power, the discoms have also undertaken several measures to ensure reliable power supply during upcoming summer months.
“These include, preventive maintenance, a large part of which is already over and the balance will be completed before the onset of summers, call centre being strengthened, load balancing at the sub-stations, deployment of additional manpower, setting up of dedicated team for monitoring of complaints etc. Moreover, a large part of the distribution schemes, which were considered necessary to further strengthen the distribution system are already completed, the balance are on track to be completed.”