PESU takes steps for uninterrupted supply of power

PATNA: The Patna Electric Supply Undertaking (PESU), which undertakes power supply work in Patna and some peripheral areas, has geared up well in advance with the maintenance work to ensure adequate and uninterrupted power supply to consumers and to avoid load shedding during peak summer months.
Instructions for preventive maintenance of transformers, feeders and substations have been issued to field engineers, line-men and MRT (maintenance repair team) workers among others. Besides, they are also engaged in cabling, pruning of tree branches, segregating feeders and changing switches in transformers among other works.
Murtaza Hilal, general manager of PESU said around 500 employees from executive engineers to linemen have been engaged in power maintenance work every day, which is targeted to be completed by March-end.
"We have done maintenance work of maintenance of all 71 substations, 33 and 11kV feeders (which is 350) and distribution transformers (8,412). Two additional power substations have been installed each at Patliputra Industrial Area and Chhajubagh. With this, total power substations have increased to 71 under the PESU, which is divided into 13 divisions. During the ongoing maintenance work, 25 new transformers have been installed, where there is overloading issues. So, there will be no or minimum power interruption," PESU GM said.
He told this newspaper on Saturday that they have segregated the some of the feeders, which were overloaded. "The step has been taken to reduced its flow by sharing it with another power sub-stations. The maintenance team is pruning branches, which are near to our conductor lines. At some places, where there are issues of snapping of conductors, we have stalled aerial bunched (AB) cables. Around 25-30-km of lines were changed to AB cables at some densely populated areas including Khagaul, Gulzarbagh, Kankerbagh, Phulwarisharif and Digha," Hilal said.
The projected electricity requirement for average maximum peak demand in the month of April will be 400-450 megawatt (MW) per day, which is expected to increase to 500-550 MW in May and June and above 600MW in July depending on temperature and weather condition, he said, adding the PESU has stalled the capacity to provide 1,705 MW per day.