B'lore reels under power cuts

The IT capital of the nation is reeling under frequent power cuts since the last two days with the city power grid network experiencing technical problems. Besides, the city is facing power shortage in view of increase in demand statewide.

On Sunday, several areas of the city faced black-out for more than six hours. Bangalore Electricity Supply Company (Bescom) officials attributed the power cuts to 'network problem'.

"On Sunday, we were integrating a newly-commissioned sub-station to the city grid when technical problems surfaced. We have solved it for the time being. The integration will be done in a phased manner and the city grid might experience snags for the next 20 days resulting in unscheduled power cuts," a top Bescom official said.

He contended that consumers had been informed about the unscheduled power cuts. "However, we did not expect a technical snag of this magnitude," he added.

Bescom is also finding it difficult to meet the demand in Bangalore with the government planning load-shedding statewide.

The government had initially planned load-shedding in rural areas to spare urban areas from power cuts. However, the plan failed to materialise with supply going haywire. The demand for power in Bangalore is 22 million units per day.

"At present, the power supply is around 21 million units per day to Bangalore since the demand for electricity supply has to be balanced throughout the state. We may have to resort to power cuts in Bangalore intermittently for a few more days till the government chalks out a plan for streamlined load-shedding."

The demand for the entire state has risen to 140 million units per day this year as against an availability of 117 million units. Karnataka's attempts to purchase electricity from states producing surplus power has failed.

The Centre has also turned down the state's request to allocate additional power (500 Mw) from the Central grid. Last week, chief minister H D Kumaraswamy had said the government would resort to load-shedding in order to meet the demand.