Patna, May 30: The Digha grid sub-station, which was scheduled to be commissioned by June end, may be completed by August-September.

Once commissioned, the grid would reduce the burden on Khagaul grid sub-station, which supplies power to a major part of western Patna.

Digha, Ashiana Nagar, Raja Bazaar, Samanpura, Bailey Road, IGIMS area, Boring Road, SK Puri, SK Nagar, Anandpuri, AN College, New Patliputra, Alpana Market, Rajiv Nagar, AG Colony, Indrapuri, Mahesh Nagar, Patel Nagar, Kesri Nagar, Nehru Nagar, Khajpura, Excise Colony and Valmi are the areas which bear the brunt of powercuts because of heavy load on Khagaul grid sub-station.

Patna residents have had to face frequent powercuts either because of vagaries of nature or overloaded power grid sub-stations with the onset of summer and low capacity to supply power. Their woes did not end as they have been facing frequent powercuts for the past 10 days because of pre-monsoon showers.

Patna has six power grids — Fatuha (150MVA), Khagaul (150MVA), Mithapur, Gaighat and Katra (100 MVA each) and Jakkanpur (170MVA) and 45 power sub-stations, which cater to the energy requirement of the capital and sub-urban areas besides Fatuha. These grids supply around 415MW of power to Patna.

An official of Patna Electric Supply Undertaking (Pesu) told The Telegraph on condition of anonymity that Khagaul grid, which provides power supply to western part of the undertaking, is overloaded especially during summer (April to October). He added the pressure could be eased off Khagaul grid once the Digha grid starts operating.

“Once Digha grid becomes operational, it will not only reduce the load on Khagaul grid but we will also be in a position to have additional capacity to provide supply to other parts of the sub-urban areas,” he said, adding that areas like Digha, Patliputra, Rajabazaar and Ashiana Nagar would get power supply from the Digha grid sub-station.

Even the maintenance work would become easier with the commissioning of Digha station as the supply length would be short in comparison to Khagaul from where the supply is presently provided to these areas, the officer added.

Asked what would be an alternative arrangement if a major technical snag occurs, the officer said: “Right now, we don’t have an alternative except to source the supply from other existing grids. But we are going to have some new grids which will, if commissioned according to the schedule, will provide uninterrupted power supply to the capital.”

According to sources, the grid at Digha (132/33KVA) should have been completed by June. The grid at Sampatchak (220/132/33 KVA) would be complete by April 2012.

Pesu, which has recently doubled the capacity of 14 power sub-stations from 5MVA to 10MVA, claims to be enhance capacities of another eight sub-stations by June.

Chief minister Nitish Kumar on April 14 inaugurated the state’s 69th 132/33KV Ekangarsarai grid sub-station in Nalanda besides laying the foundation stone for another grid sub-station in Nalanda to be completed by March 2012.