Better SMS?alerts on power cuts: Bescom

Bangalore: Representatives of industry met the Energy Department and Bescom officials on Saturday to discuss the problems faced by HT consumers due to the unscheduled power cuts in the city. The representatives of industries that come under the HT consumer category raised the issue of unscheduled po­wer cuts.

“There has to be a mechanism to keep HT consumers informed. Our operations are planned and when unscheduled power cuts occur, we make losses. Due to the recent unscheduled power cuts, we have been making a loss of about Rs 50 lakh a day,” an industry representative stated.

After listening to the grievances of the industry bodies, Bescom managing director Pankaj Ku­mar Pandey gave an assurance that Bescom will provide SMS services to HT consumers to alert them to power outages.

“We are working on improving the SMS service to ensure that an SMS alert can be made available to consumers,” said Pandey.

Bescom has come un­der attack from consumers for the glitches in its electronic clearance service, and is issuing receipts manually. Since October, the software for the electronic clearance service has been causing problems and till now, the ‘bug’ has not been fixed. Bescom officials blame the software vendor for the problem.

To address the issue of short fall in the power supply, the energy department is mulling over promoting the use of solar rooftop power for industries, government buildings and private companies.

“There is already a 30 per cent subsidy on roof­top solar and it can help us save on power consumption. The KERC has already made announment on tariffs for the power supplied to the grid from rooftop solar. Hence, we want to promote its use among industries, private companies and residential homes,” said Amitha Prasad, principal secretary, energy.