Jammu, Nov 26: Chairing a meeting to review the functioning of the Power Development Department (PDD), Chief Secretary Arun Kumar Mehta Friday called for reducing unscheduled power cuts and managing transformer repairs.
An official spokesman in a statement issued here said that during the meeting, Mehta was informed that in the current financial year so far, Kashmir registered 64,588 million units of energy consumption, which is 7.98 percent higher than the previous year’s consumption of 59,796.19 million units.
Similarly, there is a 17.33 percent increase in the peak load consumption in Kashmir which indicates the rapidly increasing demand for electricity and its peak load over last year.
Mehta reviewed the earlier directions of replacement of damaged transformers within 12 hours in main towns and 24 hours in other areas and directed the strict implementation of the timelines.
To monitor unscheduled cuts, he directed the submission of daily reports related to the system average interruption frequency index (SAIFI) and system average interruption duration index (SAIDI) and several damaged transformers and time taken for replacements.
Mehta directed the department to rationally analyse the supply and demand of electricity in various regions of J&K and raise awareness on the feeder-wise authorised electricity drawal limit.
He asked the department to undertake an extensive IEC campaign in both print and social media and garner public support for judicious use of electricity in collaboration with the Panchayats and Urban Local Bodies.
“The responsible use of electricity will minimise transformer damage on account of overloading besides reducing the unscheduled power cuts,” Mehta said.
He asked the department to proactively manage the power load.
To make public grievance redressal prompt and efficient, especially in times of power failure, Mehta asked the department to publicise the helpline numbers established in this regard and issue SMS alerts and notifications to such consumers whose mobile numbers were available in the PDD database on all scheduled and unscheduled power cuts.
He also asked the department to fix the responsibility of unauthorised connections, power pilferage especially from feeders reporting electricity load above the permissible limit on the concerned line staff, and take disciplinary action for their inefficiency in taking corrective measures.
Mehta said that the divisional and district administrations would also be involved in the enforcement efforts and directed that responsibility be fixed for transformer outages.
He directed regular surveillance and enforcement drives to disconnect illegal power connections so that consumers were able to get power without undue interruptions.