BEST administration has now fast-tracked several improvements to its infrastructure to better deal with emergency situations.
Facing severe flak from all quarters following Sunday’s incident where a power cable at Backbay substation caught fire, the BEST administration has fast-tracked several improvements to its infrastructure to better deal with emergency situations. The improvements relate to the physical infrastructure used in power supply and the systems used for communicating with consumers.
There will be strengthening of the supply of alternative feeds, especially in those locations in south Mumbai which are isolated and suffered the most during the outage since power couldn’t be diverted there from other substations. These locations include Cuffe Parade and Nariman Point.
Also, to address the problem of poor communication with consumers, emergency communication systems will be upgraded and planned in such a way that information is available with consumers on a real-time basis during emergencies.
“We will now plan for earthquake-like situations. What happened on Sunday was nothing short of an earthquake in BEST’s history.
Nothing of this sort had happened before,” said Om Prakash Gupta, general manager, BEST.
In addition, the KLG system, introduced to improve interface with power consumers by providing services concerning billing and power supply, is yet to be fully implemented. The implementation of this scheme will now be expedited.
In the committee meeting held on Wednesday afternoon, BEST committee member Ravi Raja complained that despite having a scheme such as KLG, power consumers could not get information about power outages in real time. “The consumers should know what is the nature of the problem and how long it will take for power to return.”
Justifying the poor communication with consumers during Sunday’s incident, Gupta said, “While inspecting damage to the equipment and supply systems, especially during fires of such magnitude, it is difficult to estimate the damage and the time required for the problem to be fixed.”
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