Poor equipment short-circuit UP’s power sector

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Lucknow, Jul 23 : For a state, which is already reeling under immense power shortage, to know that its transformer damage rate is a whopping 30 % as against the national average of 2%, is bad news. This and many other disturbing facts were pointed out in a report prepared by the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur on the ailing power sector in Uttar Pradesh.

The Equipment Quality Control Committee, formed by the Uttar Pradesh Electricity Regulatory Commission, is the first such independent committee in the country which has been set up to monitor equipment quality. Having experts from IIT-K, UPERC, UPERC and the UPPCL, the committee has SC Srivastava, dean faculty IIT-Kanpur, Electrical department as its chairmanship.

Apart from gross anomalies in their procurement of sub standard transformers and transmission cables, the team also detected improper maintenance by the state utility, the Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation as the chief reasons for the pathetic power situation in the state.

The committee, which made these observations in its 100 page report, came to this conclusion after extensive inspection of work in all the four discoms in the state. “The procurement process of equipment in these discoms is scattered and not done in an organized way. No set parameters exist, based on which procurement of conductors, transformers, metres, cable, and other materials are done. And if the discoms continue to work like this and do not follow strict norms, the situation in the state can get out of hand and worsen,” was the committee's grim observation.

According to the recommendations suggested by the committee, a strong equipment monitoring system must be put in place urgently and strict adherence to safety measures must be ensured to get uninterrupted power supply. “Our work was to investigate major equipment failures, find reasons behind it and suggest remedial measures. And we have found that the reason why there is a huge transformer damage rate in UP is because there is no proper specification for procurement of equipment as well as for vendor selection.

The post inspection installation, too, is poor, resulting in repeated failures, said S C Srivastava of IIT-Kanpur, adding that the committee has suggested that standard specifications should be laid down for the procurement process and guidelines must be framed and followed. “There should also be third party checks done on major equipment. This will help in bringing down the number of failures,” he stated.

Another interesting observation by the team was that while major government of India approved schemes like the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana and the Accelerated Power Development and Reform Programme (APDRP) were awarded to reputed companies on turn key basis, but after getting the tenders, these companies give the work to these companies engage sub contractors to complete the jobs. These sub contractors neither have the required trained manpower nor the resources to get the job done properly, thus resulting in poor quality of work.