Come summer, G’gram’s power pangs mount
Sumedha Sharma
Over 200 homes in Palam Vihar township of Gurugram city went without power for two days early this week, marking the onset of the summer. The two-day power cut witnessed after a blast in the 400 kilovolt (kv) transformer highlighted the poor state of power management in Gurugram. The dream of uninterrupted electricity supply continues to evade Gurugram even after four decades though it was first promised while granting a building licence to developer DLF Limited in 1981-82. Massive development happened and soon the sleepy town was transformed into a cosmopolitan city. However, the exponential unplanned growth led to major infrastructural problems, especially related to power. Three months of summer is all that it takes to expose the shallowness of the promise of a comfortable life in a cosmopolitan city.
Repeated power snags and outages are reported from across the city be it HUDA-developed sectors or developer colonies such as Palam Vihar, Sushant Lok 1, South City 1 and 2, Ardee City, Malibu Towne, Sun City, Mayfield Garden and also not so posh regularised colonies such as Rajiv Nagar and Patel Nagar.
Residents, who settled in the millennium city in the hope of a better life and facilities, say that they feel shortchanged as power cuts for six to eight hours every day during the summer has become a routine. While the DHBVN is usually blamed for the shortage of supply during the summer, it's the ever increasing undeclared demand of power and steep rise in population per square kilometre that have lead to the chaotic situation.
High undeclared demand
Between 2000 and 2005, the city's power demand was between 225 MW and 350 MW while the number of consumers increased from 2.75 lakh to 3.25 lakh. There were seven stations and all of them were under-loaded, as per the records, and Gurugram faced minimum power cuts, mostly scheduled. However, with the advent of industries, multi-national companies (MNCs), commercial establishments, group housing projects, condominiums and hundreds of unauthorised colonies, Gurugram city began to experience power shortage after 2005. Between 2006 and 2010, Gurugram’s power demand shot up to 950 MW to 1,000 MW, almost three times in four years. There has been no let up since then. Gurugram is about 1.65 per cent of the Haryana's total area (44,212 sq km) but it consumes over 20 per cent of the power that the state gets. Power supply in Gurugram had touched around 1,700 MW during the last summer and given the trend it is expected to go up to 2,000 MW to 2,100 MW.
However, even though there was no actual power deficit in terms of availability, the government could not build a power supply infrastructure to cater to the needs of the tens of thousands of approved colonies, malls, MNCs and shopping complexes. Residents complain that even though the government has taken external development charges (EDC), it has failed to put in place proper feeders, substations and transformers for uninterrupted power supply.
However, it's actually undeclared power demand that leads to chaos. To cater to ever increasing residential demand created by a realty boom, the city witnessed rampant illegal constructions. Houses that were fit for five people were converted into paying guest accommodations housing as many as 20 people. Houses with sanctioned power loads and meters to support one air-conditioner installed many. With the situation the same everywhere, local power infrastructures are always found wanting, leading to snags. While the authorities concerned have repeatedly appealed to people to declare load or increase it according to their requirements but not many have worked on it.
Besides, theft accounts for 20 per cent of the power losses in Gurugram. This affects newly developed posh areas such as the Golf Course road, MG road and Cyber City. Power theft is blamed on rural areas such as Nathupur, Sikanderpur and Chakkarpur.
Homebuyer-builder dispute
Left to the mercy of builders for infrastructure maintenance, many posh colonies of the city are facing power shortage owing to either pending bills or poor infrastructure.
Power distribution agency DHBVN had in 2013 prepared the details of deficient infrastructure in 16 private colonies and submitted the report to the Director General, Town and Country Planning Department, Haryana, to expedite the recovery of arrears from builders.
According to the DHBVN report, Unitech group (developer of South City 1 and 2), and Ansal API (developer of Sushant Lok 1 and Palam Vihar) are the biggest defaulters. “Unitech owes Rs 200 crore in terms of a deficient electricity infrastructure and Ansal API owes Rs 180 crore. Mayfield Garden owes Rs 85 crore, while Malibu Towne has to pay Rs 58 crore,” said the report.
City residents had in March last year raised the issue with Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar in a meeting in Gurugram. Under pressure of the residents, KM Pandurang, Director General, Town and Country Planning, had called a meeting of the representatives of various resident welfare associations, builders and DHBVN officials at the Gymkhana Club, Sector 29, on May 15 last year. However, according to residents, no solution has been found so far.
Giving up all efforts, the resident welfare association of Ardee City applied to the DHBVN for a direct electricity connection at their own cost. The Ardee City developer owes Rs 21 crore. The residents decided to bear Rs 7 crore on their own to address the power shortage and they were provided a direct connection. Meanwhile, the situation in Palam Vihar, Sushant Lok and South City deteriorated after KM Pandurang announced the transfer of these colonies from the builders to the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG). After this, many residents stopped paying the monthly maintenance fee to the resident welfare associations or the agency responsible for the day-to-day maintenance
Is smart grid the solution?
The smart grid project, a system of underground infrastructure maintained remotely through technology, is being touted as the final solution to the long-standing power woes of Gurugram city.
Expected to be ready by 2021, the smart grid will curb theft and technical faults to save 120 MW to 150 MW in the city daily and will be one of a kind system in the country. Under the smart grid, all 11 KV lines and other low-transmission lines will be shifted underground and a software-based technology will root out the need for manual maintenance. This will also improve power distribution, according to DHBVN officials. Under the project, a 2,500-km duct will be constructed and the overhead infrastructure such as wires supported by more than 7,000 poles, feeders and transformers will be shifted underground.
The project will be executed in four phases - First, all overhead wires will be placed underground; following which substations will be connected to the network, then the supervisory control and data acquisition (Scada) system will be installed and finally an advanced metering system will be put in place.
The Haryana Government had conceived the smart grid project in 2011-12 with an aim to improve the electricity distribution system. However, fund arrangements between the state and Central governments and the decision on the nodal agency to execute the project delayed the work by many years.
The 11-KV line supplies electricity from substations to transformers and from there to the retailers (domestic consumers) for household use.
The present manual maintenance system will be replaced by Scada, a software-based technology to monitor all substations. The total cost of the smart grid project is Rs 1,600 crore, of which the Centre has to provide Rs 823 crore. Forty per cent of the work has already been completed, say DHBVN officials.
Power theft a concern
The DHBVN has more than five lakh consumers spread across 600 group housing societies, 35 villages, over 50 municipal colonies, 75 unauthorised colonies and in Sectors 1 to 57. Pilferage or power theft is a big concern for the Discom, as it impairs its power distribution and supply by 20 per cent.
300 new transformers to be installed
The DHBVN is likely to install at least 300 new transformers in the city to improve power supply during the summer, by the first week of May when electricity consumption usually starts rising every year.
DHBVN officials say that they expect the peak summer demand to touch 1,950 MW this year and, as such, the infrastructure needs to be augmented to ensure uninterrupted electricity supply.
The DHBVN held a meeting of its top officials last week to decide division-wise installation of 20 to 25 transformers every day to meet the target. There are currently four zones in Gurugram, namely Manesar, Sohna, City and Suburban. As such, each division is sure to get around 75 transformers.
