Mescom bring down distribution loss to 12.46 pc

Mangalore Electricity Supply Company Limited (MESCOM) Managing Director S Sumanth said that Mescom was able to reduce the distribution loss to 12.46 per cent in 2010 from 23.10 per cent in 2003. Data Transfer Catalogue (DTC) failure rate has been reduced to 9.47 per cent in 2010 from 17.71 per cent in 2003.

Making a presentation at the hearing of Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission (KERC) on the revision of power tariff here on Tuesday, he said that the implementation of various system improvement works, Transmission and Distribution losses have been reduced considerably. Mescom wants to reach 5 per cent loss in all the towns coming under its jurisdiction.

He said Mescom has introduced fixing auto reclosures and sectionalisers to the 175 selected 11kv feeders, of which, the work on 135 feeders have been completed.

This has reduced the line interruptions and increased the energy consumption. About 147 feeders are commissioned with Rural Load Management System. This helps to increase the quality of power supply and uninterrupted 3 phase supply to the Irrigation Pumpsets (IP) in the scheduled time.

Mescom has procured Thermal Imaging Infrared Camera with laser and scalable PIP to detect and predict the failure in transformer. Mescom plans to procure more such Thermal Imaging Infrared Camera with laser and scalable PIP.

The MD said that as there is an increase in the cost of power purchase, the revision of power tariff is necessary. The projected power purchase cost for 2011 was Rs 1303.36 crore. A sum of Rs 884.06 crore was used for the power purchase during 2010.

The only financial resource for the company is the tariff charged to the consumers and the subsidy support of the government. It is estimated that about Rs 188.65 crore will be earned through the proposed tariff hike which is 75 paise per unit for all categories except Bhagya Jyothi/ Kuteera Jyothi and IP category.

Shortage of staff

He said that the MESCOM is functioning under severe shortage of staff. The sanctioned staff to MESCOM is 7,062, of which, about 2,958 posts are vacant.