Carving out Vennala section from the old Palarivattam section of Kerala State Electricity Board is expected to improve service delivery. The new section, with approximately 14,000 consumers, was inaugurated here on Thursday by the Minister for Electricity and Transport Aryadan Mohammed.
A senior KSEB official said the old Palarivattam section was spread over 15 sq. km. and had approximately 28,000 consumers.
A statement issued by the Public Relations Department said the new section would have 50 km of 11 kv line; 245 km of low tension line and 73 transformers under it.
The other new section that was inaugurated on Thursday was the Alangad section, which was carved out of old Varappuzha, which had approximately 28,000 consumers under it. The new section will initially have around 9,000 consumers and the old section will retain approximately 19,000 consumers.
The KSEB official said quality of service delivery can be sustained when the consumer count is at 15,000 per section. However, most of the sections had over 20,000 consumers under them and some of them had even exceeded 25,000.
KSEB had submitted before Kerala State Electricity Regulatory Commission that the Commission was not allowing it to increase its cost of operations in keeping with the increase in its business. The Board figures said it sold 12,414 million units of electricity in 2008-2009 to 94 lakh customers. The sales are projected to go up to 18,239 million units to 1.12 crore customers, the increase over the period being 18.69 per cent in customer base and nearly 47 per cent in energy sale.
The Board figures said it had a technical staff strength of 20,830 at the end of March 2009. The number had gone up to 25,265, an increase of 4,445 over the period.
Of a total of 33 new sections sanctioned for the whole of Kerala, Ernakulam district got nine new ones. Six new sections were allotted for Ernakulam town and three for Perumbavoor. The Ernakulam circle has a total of 31 sections now.
Ernakulam district accounts for 12 lakh of the over one crore customers served by KSEB.
