The Bangalore Electricity Supply Company has once again said that there won’t be any further unscheduled power cuts in the city. This latest announcement came after many parts of Bengaluru including parts of the central business districts faced long hours of unscheduled power cuts throughout last week.
Among the worst affected areas were MG Road, Indiranagar, Shanthinagar, Jayanagar, Old Airport Road, Infantry road, Victoria Road, Frazer Town, Marathahalli, HRBR Layout, and Koramangala.
However, unlike previous instances where the power cuts happened due to shortage of coal, the cuts last week were reportedly because of a technical snag, according to Bescom officials.
“There was some interruption in the flasher in Hoodi station operated by the Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation. It was not a scheduled power cut. It took around three-four hours to repair the damage. During the outage period, all the down-substations in the city had no power supply. There is no shortage of coal currently. Both the Raichur and Udupi thermal power plants are working properly.” an Assistant Engineer with Bescom told TNM.
He attributed all other power cuts in the city to maintenance issues like faulty cables or feeders.
A very dry monsoon had resulted in power cuts which lasted as long as six hours from August to December 2015.
More recently at the end of November, the city had faced multiple unscheduled power cuts, reportedly owing to shortage of coal to run its thermal power plants. 55% of Karnataka’s power is sourced from thermal power plants.
Karnataka is betting on solar power to curb its dependency on conventional source of electricity production.
The Pavagada solar power plant in Tumakuru touted to be the world’s largest solar power station is set to yield 2700 MW of power. The plant will be functional by the end of 2018 accord to government estimates.