transforming bihar

Patna, Feb. 19: Summer is less than a month away, but the people of Patna are already feeling the heat. The power entity has started pulling up its socks.

Fear lurks that the state could be left powerless with several cases of loadshedding being reported from several colonies in the state capital.

Patna Electricity Supply Undertaking (Pesu) has adopted several steps to try and find a solution to the situation by increasing the electric supply, especially for summer.

Pesu is trying to replace the faulty and dilapidated transmission lines under its jurisdiction. It is also trying to replace the overloaded transformers, to increase the capacity of power sub-stations, to expedite the construction work of four new power sub-stations and speeding up the power theft checking drive.

“We have initiated a number of measures to provide continuous power supply to the people of the state capital. We just need to speed up the measures probably before April,” Pesu general manager S.K.P Singh told The Telegraph.

“We have already doubled the capacity of 14 power sub-stations from 5MVA to 10MVA last year itself. And now, our focus is to enhance the capacity of another seven to eight sub-stations before the onset of summer,” Singh said.

He, however, said the undertaking, which has around 45 sub-stations in the city, does not need to increase the capacity of the remaining sub-stations. Their capacity would be enhanced in future, if needed.

“Once the capacity augmentation is done, it would reduce the burden of distribution length and that would subsequently reduce the maintenance load. Thus, there will be less tripping,” he added.

Pesu, which has been entrusted with the job of supplying power to the state capital, would add four power sub-stations by the end of September this year.

Of the four, a power sub-station at the capital feed campus would be completed first and could be made operational by April 30.

“Similarly, construction work on Saguna More and Haj Bhavan power sub-stations would be complete by June 30 and that at Transport Nagar by September 30,” Singh said.

The undertaking has also identified around 250-300 places in the capital, where distribution transformers are in a bad shape because of either overload or age, the general manager said, adding that high-capacity installations would be installed at these places phase-wise.