Adhering to simple safety guidelines and maintaining social distancing from electricity infrastructure, BSES and its consumers together can help ensure a safe and incident-free monsoon season.

Some of the unique problems during monsoons are water-logging, strong winds uprooting trees, and falling branches that damage electricity installations resulting in outages.

In order to safeguard human lives and electrical equipment, it also becomes necessary to switch off electricity supply to an affected area as a precautionary measure.

Explaining its monsoon plans, a BSES official said, "We are geared up to ensure reliable power supply to our over 48 lakh consumers and over 2 crore residents while taking all safety measures that are required during rainy season. Consumers can play a very important role in ensuring an incident-free monsoon by following simple safety guidelines.

"To ensure that our consumers enjoy incident-free power supply, BSES Rajdhani Power Limited (BRPL) and BSES Yamuna Power Limited (BYPL) are undertaking all possible measures. The discoms’ monsoon action plan has an integrated and proactive approach, which is not only aimed at ensuring consumers’ safety, but is also aimed at minimising the down time of power supply arising out of exigencies during monsoon.

BSES discoms are fully geared for the monsoons by undertaking extensive preventive maintenance. To reduce the incidence of moisture-related breakdowns, active measures have been taken to minimise the accumulation of moisture in the grids and panels.

Preventive measures:

* Height of the foundation (base) of transformers in low-lying areas increased to safe levels

* Prevent water-logging that in turn may create seepage and moisture in the switchgear

* Proper fencing around all plinth and pole mounted transformers

* Deployment of quick response teams to tackle exigencies

* Setting up war room to review complaints for quick resolution 

As per advisory for customers, due to water-logging, chances of electricity related mishaps are high during the monsoon season. Some simple precautions will help the consumers stay safe:

* Stay away from electrical installations like electricity poles, sub-stations, transformers, streetlights etc.

* Caution children from playing near electricity installations, even if they are barricaded. Advise them not play in parks that are water logged.

* Get entire wiring in your premises thoroughly checked and tested by a licensed electrical contractor.

* Put off the main switch in case there is water-logging or leakage is observed in the meter cabin. Put on the main switch only after ensuring that all faults have been rectified properly.

* Install an earth leakage circuit breaker (ELCB) to help avoid shocks and mishaps

* Keep a tester at home. If a switch is wet, do not touch it. First use a tester to check if there is an electricity leakage. If need be, call your electrician

Power-theft by way of hooking into an electricity system poses a serious safety hazard, especially during the monsoon months. Invariably these ‘hooked on’ wires are not insulated or properly fixed, in case of windy or rainy weather, they can fall-off, and cause grievous injuries or even fatalities. BSES appeals to all citizens of Delhi to please report and convince people not to illegally draw electricity by hooking on to mainlines or electrical equipment. 

Another reason for outages is unplanned digging for road repair or to lay cables/ pipelines. This not only causes outages (sometimes for long duration), but can also be a serious safety threat -- especially during the rainy season -- for the area residents/passersby, as also for the workers involved in the digging. For your safety, if you dig or come across digging, please inform BSES. (IANS/NS)