A 33 kV indoor electrical substation of the Kerala State Electricity Board at Peyad — the second of its kind in the city—is scheduled to go online on Monday, holding out a promise of enhanced voltage and fewer power disruptions to consumers.
The first indoor substation of the KSEB in the capital city at Melarannoor, built at a cost of Rs.3.91 crore, went online in June 2012.
The Peyad facility has been completed at Rs.6 crore and is expected to service more than 30,000 consumers who come under the Peyad electrical section.
Executive Engineer (Transmission), Thiruvananthapuram, S.T. Vijayaraj told The Hindu that the indoor substation would benefit consumers in Peyad, Puliyarakkonam, Vilappilsala, Perukaavu, Thachottukaavu, Mangattukadavu, and Kadukkamoodu.
“The new facility has been set up in 18 cents of land given to us by the Vilappil grama panchayat. Though we have put up the building, the grama panchayat will continue to own the land. The substation will be on the ground floor and on the first floor we will house our sub-division office which was till now functioning out of a rented building. We stand to gain a lot of money by this,” Mr. Vijayaraj explained.
The panchayat has also requested the KSEB — as a reciprocal gesture — to make some kind of adjustment in its power bill arrears of more than Rs.20 lakh.
The indoor substation would be fed power by 33 kV underground cables drawn from the 110 kV Thirumala substation seven kilometres away. “Peyad has two 5 MVA transformers and can serve four feeders at a time. We are now charging only two of them. This means that the substation has the capacity to serve more people in future. Construction of the substation began in 2010,” Mr. Vijayaraj added.
The KSEB recently gave the administrative sanction for the construction of an indoor substation inside its headquarters complex at the Vydyuthi Bhavan here. Even though another facility scheduled to come up at Pattoor was originally planned as an indoor substation, it would now be an outdoor structure.
