Power outage: BEST mulls replacing age-old equipment

The Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport (BEST) is now identifying vital components in the electric system – from substations to cables – that have become old and need replacement. On May 11, even the power house at the Mantralaya saw a power cut for nearly five minutes, while a day prior Malabar Hill faced an outage.

The BEST Undertaking has taken this seriously and has initiated an internal investigation. The officials claim they are working on identifying the actual problem and finding a long-term solution.

The areas in south Mumbai have rarely seen so many back-to-back faults in power supply in many years. “At Malabar Hill, the outage was due to relay malfunctioning at the Backbay receiving station,” said a senior BEST official.

Sources said there are around 60-62 locations where the relays are installed. Of these, a number of them need to be replaced as they are more than 35-40 years old. This is part of its overall revamp of Rs 6,000 crore.

This includes replacing the old underground cables that were laid 70-80 years ago, with new ones at a cost of Rs 3,500 crore. Sources said that as the cables have become old, they are finding it difficult to repair them. By June, the process and paperwork for replacing them will begin.

The BEST has chalked out a five-year plan which will require the massive multicrore fillip to upgrade the British era network. This includes restructuring of the 1,000-km underground cable network. The work will be carried out across the 800km Cuffe Parade-ColabaSion/Mahim stretch across the island city. The BEST will also set up 200 new substations, besides going for automation of the entire chain of power network’s working, developing smart grids, and upgrading the SCADA system.