All 17 municipal corpns, Noida to be ‘no tripping zones’

LUCKNOW: Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Ltd (UPPCL) on Friday fixed deadlines for declaring the state’s 17 municipal corporation and Noida as ‘no tripping zones’in phases. The last phase will be completed by August 15.

“The rollout plan to rid 17 municipal corporations as well Noida of power outages is ready and officials have been asked to take action in a mission mode to meet the deadlines,” UPPCL chairman and principal secretary, energy, Alok Kumar said.

As per the rollout plan, Ghaziabad, Meerut, Noida and Varanasi will be declared ‘no tripping zones’ by July 15. Lucknow, Bareilly, Moradabad, Mathura, Aligarh, Jhansi and Firozabad will be rid of outages by July 31. In the third and last phase, Allahabad, Gorakhpur, Shahajhanpur, Faizabad, Saharanpur and Kanpur will be free from power cuts by August 15.

The corporation has decided to install or replace meter modems on all the feeders in the cities concerned to make daily analysis of outage reports and identify critical areas for taking timely action.

“It is observed that many outages are for unplanned shutdown for repair of transformers and lines or in view of a rough weather. To deal with the problem, it has been decided to introduce a mobile service van in each division, with dedicated manpower to attend faults especially during night hours,” Kumar said. He said triple pole manually operated switches(TPMOs) would be installed at transformers with high frequency of tripping.

“We have also asked the Noida authority to bifurcate the electricity load of substations to minimize tripping due to overloading,” he Kumar said. To reduce cable damage due to digging of roads, the corporation will ask the departments concerned not to begin digging without prior permission from the discom concerned, he added.

He said the discoms had been advised to bring incentive schemes for contract workers to deal with the issue of staff shortage at the substations.

The work on ‘no tripping zones’ began after the issue of frequent outages was brought to the notice of energy minister Srikant Sharma during a meeting in Noida a few weeks ago. Thereafter, he directed the UPPCL management to declare 17 municipal corporations and Noida as ‘no tripping zones’ at the earliest.