Bescom has brought down the number of power interruptions in the city close to 50% this year.
Although the duration of power cuts has come down, Bengaluru continued to experience 66 hours of power cuts in April alone and nearly 67 hours in May. By contrast, the city had 145.7 hours and 157.9 hours of power cuts, respectively, in April and May 2021.
The number of disruptions has also not reduced in proportion to the duration.
While the System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI), a power reliability index measuring the average duration of interruption per consumer, has come down drastically, the System Average Interruption Frequency Index (SAIFI), which represents the average frequency of power cut, has not improved much.
“We have implemented the Distribution Automation System (DAS) across Bengaluru, which helps us in early fault detection. This has helped us bring down the duration of interruption since the last three years,” a senior Bescom official explained.
On why the number of outages has not come down, another official pointed out that most power interruptions were due to pole damage. “Either that or falling of tree branches on electric wires is the reason. From our end, we can ensure the teams are dispatched quickly and the fault is rectified. Since most of the damages are due to natural conditions, it is impossible to avoid them. However, we do take up preventive measures by pruning tree branches,” the official explained.
Senior Bescom officials told DH that the reliability will increase in the coming months since Bescom is working on converting electric cables to underground and aerial bundled cables.
“Underground cabling will bring down the line damages to a great extent. We are confident that the number of interruptions will come down significantly once the project is completed,” an official said.
They added that regular transformer maintenance and servicing have been taken up to provide uninterrupted power supply.