Even as southern, eastern and western parts of the Bengaluru are expected to face infrequent power supply for the next three days, starting Monday, neither Bescom nor KPTCL has informed the citizens of power cuts. The state electricity regulatory authority has ruled that power supply companies have to inform the public about such outages a week in advance. For the last three months, the Power Grid Corporation has been trying to set up the Singanayakanahalli power station near Yelahanka. But due to power shortage, the line clearance work was postponed. Finally from Monday, the station will be synchronized. But the work to be completed, Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation Ltd has to shut down the Neelamangala power station.
The line clearance work will also affect the supply from other stations, like Hoody and Somanahalli. “The line clearance work is being undertaken by the Power Grid Corporation of India Ltd. The Nelamangala power sub-station will be shut down and load have to be managed by Hoody and Somanahalli. There will be power cuts, but I don’t know which areas. It is for Bescom to decide,” said KPTCL, Chief Engineer, Major Kumar Pujjar.
Bescom said it can manage the supply. “We have both Hoody and Somanahalli stations to manage load. We hope that we may not have to resort to load shedding if the people cooperate. We have asked industries to cut their peak hour load by 50 per cent. If the people too keep their usage low, there will be no load shedding at all,” said Bescom Superintending Engineer Nagarjuna. But when the Federation of Karnataka Chambers of Commerce and Industry was asked about the Bescom request to cut down power usage, its Energy Committee Chairman M.G. Prabhakar was surprised. “We have not been informed of any such outage. All units are working as per the schedule,” he said.
The Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission has made it mandatory for electricity supply companies, including Bescom, to inform the consumers of the details of power cuts and areas to be affected a week in advance. It had also stated that Bescom should coordinate with KPTCL for maintenance work schedules. Till late on Sunday night, KPTCL and Bescom had not sent out any information to the public about possible power outages.