Dead eagle on cable leads to power breakdown

It takes a couple of hours to restore the supply as the dead bird gets stuck on the overhead line.” Sometimes there are bird collisions with electrical lines or at times the electric faults are caused by bird excretions.

According to the officials with the Rasta Peth circle,supply was restored in the area within two hours. There are 137 sub stations and each sub station has several feeder lines.

The fault has to be initially located,says Nagtilak who pointed out that the MSEDCL has outsourced the work. The power utility has also procured another cable fault finding machine.

“The machines help us to locate the faults on the underground cables. Some of them are old in various areas,”says Nagtilak. Our engineers restored the supply at Sahkarnagar,Padmavati,Maharshinagar and surrounding areas as there was moisture in the cables and it took time to locate the faults. Supply was disrupted for over four -five hours. Continuous rain has also a problem and the supply was restored late on Monday night,MSEDCL officials added.

The Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company limited (MSEDCL) has outsourced the work of patrolling the cables and in the last six months has filed as many as 100-125 FIR’s against ‘unknown’ persons for damaging cables due to road digging work.

The roads are dug up by the JCB excavators and this damages the cables lying underground,says Nagtilak. The MSEDCL now has completed more than 50 per cent of the work of laying underground cables in various areas as part of the ambitious Rs 229 crore project.

The utility has also submitted its estimates to the MSEDCL HQ for further strenghtening and upgrading the underground cable system.