Gurgaon residents show the way

What began as an experiment by 13 families at DLF City (Phase-IV) in July 2007, amid 12-hour power outages every day, has gone well with other localities too. Residents pooled in money, set up a huge community diesel generators and laid supply cables for each house. Sanjeev K Ahuja reports.

What began as an experiment by 13 families at DLF City (Phase-IV) in July 2007, amid 12-hour power outages every day, has gone well with other localities too. Residents pooled in money, set up a huge community diesel generators and laid supply cables for each house. Now, the numbers of participants has gone up to 35 families. However, it comes at an extra cost of R 11.74 per unit. This successful experiment got replicated in Block C, D and S of DLF City (I), at M-Block in DLF City (II), in Sushant Lok - I and many others areas in Gurgaon. In this city, most of the condominiums have 100 per cent power back up. Maintenance agencies or the associations have set up diesel-run captive power plants (CPPs) in the basements for each apartment. However, this facility is missing for independent houses.

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A survey conducted by Hindustan Times early this year on 3000 Gurgaon residents revealed that people were ready to pay extra money for better power supply.

"In July 2007, 13 like-minded families suffering from long outages decided to act on our own without waiting for the government to do something for us on power supply front. We got a huge community genset installed at an open space in our locality instead of each family going for individual gensets," Rajinder Sharma, a resident of DLF City (IV), said. The cabling was done at a cost of about R9 lakh and the job of setting up and maintaining gensets was outsourced. "Each family now pays R11.74 per unit and a minimum monthly amount of R1750 to this agency and gets 100 per cent power backup," Rajan Dhawan, a resident, said.