PANJIM: With Electricity Department under immense pressure from the public, in view of the amount of time it has taken for power to be restored in various places, Chief Electrical Engineer Raghuver Keni said that latest by Thursday morning, the situation should return to normalcy.
“We have done the restoration work. By today evening 94-95 per cent has been completed, by tonight, 99 per cent of the work should be completed, thereby ensuring that power is available for all the consumers. Whatever few areas are left will get done by late night (today) or latest by early morning tomorrow,” Keni said on Wednesday.
“As of now, there are some parts of Bardez, few areas in Mapusa, few in the coastal belt of Salcete, and then some areas in Pernem that we still have to be completed. The delay is mainly because of the long feeders,” Keni added.
Asked to confirm the losses that were estimated to be over Rs 25 crore, Keni said they had conducted an assessment of the overall damage caused, following which he said the department has suffered losses to the tune of Rs 22 crore.
“There have been around 45 km of snapped conductors…HT, LT (lines).. which included 1,500 bent poles out of which 700 have to be replaced. All these lines have to be restrung with new poles and conductors. It’s a whole exercise,” Keni said.
He added, “Our next focus for the next 15 days is how to further improve and strengthen everything. This means straightening the poles, replacing broken poles by installing new ones.”
Asked to explain how there were such wide-spread power outages wherein some areas have not had power for days together, Keni said the problem had affected all areas equally, except for the areas that had underground cabling.
He listed Margao, Nuvem, Verna, Loutolim, Panjim and some parts of Cuchorem, Porvorim and Cuncolim that have underground cabling and thus were not affected and spared from lengthy blackouts.
“Wherever these overhead lines are there, they get damaged by the felling of trees or branches. That was the problem. The main issue is with the (33 KV and 11 KV) feeders. If a feeder gets affected, the entire area gets affected” he said.
He also spoke about damage to towers that the Power Department has been finding tough to repair at short notice.
“One tower at Sancoale that has the 33 KV line from Verna to Vasco collapsed. Similarly, the Corlim feeder at Banastarim that has a tower on either side of the river… one of these towers collapsed. We have taken action to salvage that particular issue. But power was fed through some other sources as we have intra connections,” said Keni.
When asked what can be done to ensure that such incidents are not repeated, Keni said they are looking at expanding the underground cabling project wherein the 33 and 11 KV feeders will be completely converted to underground cabling.
He, however, cautioned that this will take time and can only be done in phases as it requires huge funds and has other logistical challenges. “The work for providing underground cabling to Mapusa has been approved and tendered. We are getting the government approvals for the other works. We have sent the files for approvals for many other places,” said Keni.
