Underground cabling plugs Bescom's distribution losses

Over the last five years, the distribution losses have gradually come down from 12.27% in 2019-20 to 9.13% in 2023-24 to 8.44% in 2024-25. The reduction in losses improves Bescom’s billing efficiency and helps bring down the power purchase costs.

Bescom’s ambitious underground cabling project seems to be yielding results as Bescom has recorded nearly a 30 per cent reduction in distribution losses in just five years, with only 8.44 per cent of the purchased power being lost during distribution in 2024-25.

Over the last five years, the distribution losses have gradually come down from 12.27 per cent in 2019-20 to 9.13 per cent in 2023-24 to 8.44 per cent in 2024-25. The reduction in losses improves Bescom’s billing efficiency and helps bring down the power purchase costs.

The project to convert overhead cables to underground cable was proposed in 2018-19 and took off by 2019-20 in phases in Bengaluru.

“A majority of the cables in Bengaluru have been converted to underground cables and as a result, losses have come down significantly,” a senior Bescom official said. 

Close to 7,030.33 km of 11kV lines were converted to underground cables and another 5,818.55 km of low tension wires were either converted to underground cables or aerial bunched cables at an overall cost of Rs 5,031.65 crore. 

Apart from the conversion to UG cables, officials also noted that the vigilance team was intensively cracking down on power theft and as a result, awareness could have improved, bringing down the energy lost due to theft.

Installation of digital meters with higher efficiency could have also helped bring down power loss, yet another official said.

However, bringing down the losses further was a challenge, they opined, since this requires underground cabling and such other works to be taken up in rural areas under Bescom. 

“Instances of theft are also high in rural areas. Also, if we invest in underground cables, the return of investment is very low. Hence, we are not very keen on it,” a senior Bescom official said. 

The distribution losses are calculated based on the difference between the input energy at the feeders and the total energy that is billed for.