Ghaziabad: High-rise societies far from ready for DG set ban under Grap

Ghaziabad: Ahead of October 15 when the ban on diesel generator (DG)-sets comes into effect in the National Capital Region (NCR), the Ghaziabad district magistrate,

Ghaziabad: Ahead of October 15 when the ban on diesel generator (DG)-sets comes into effect in the National Capital Region (NCR), the Ghaziabad district magistrate, during a review meeting of pollution abatement measures, asked resident welfare associations (RWA) to install smaller sets for emergency services such as lifts, among others. The Environment (Pollution and control) Authority (Epca), in its communication to the Uttar Pradesh chief secretary on October 8, had directed for a ban on DG-sets.

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Ghaziabad district has about 300 high-rise societies, a majority of which have multiple residential towers which are dependent primarily on DG-sets for power backup. The Epca on October 8 had exempted essential/emergency services from the ban.

“We have suggested to RWAs to install smaller capacity generator sets wherever possible for operation of lifts and other emergency services. Otherwise, the directions of Epca will be complied with and there will be strict implementation of measures under the graded response action plan (Grap),” district magistrate Ajay Shankar Pandey said.

“We will ask the electricity department to ensure that there are no power cuts. We have also asked RWAs to provide heaters in the guard room so that instances of wood-fuelled fires are fewer,” he added.

According to officials of the electricity department, Ghaziabad has a base of about eight lakh domestic electricity consumers, 90,000 commercial establishments, and another 13,000 industrial connections which primarily depend on DG-sets.

Residents of high-rises, meanwhile, said that electricity connections run on DG-sets are common for lifts, lighting in common areas and apartments as well.

“So far we have not received any notice about a ban on DG-sets from October 15 otherwise we would have given our representation. Use of smaller diesel generators will not be possible as many societies have multiple towers, where a huge investment and separate electricity cabling will be required for the smaller sets. Further, in many societies, the wiring for these is underground and in-built and cannot be separated so easily for lifts, etc,” said Alok Kumar, founder member of federation of association of apartment owners.

The residents said that there is an average of about two hours of power cut in trans-Hindon areas and that use of DG-sets must be allowed. A common connection from DG-sets to apartments and essential services is common in high-rise societies in areas like Indirapuram, Vaishali and Vasundhara, where implementation of the ban will become tricky for the administration.

On the other hand, in areas such as Kaushambi, RWAs said that they have separate connections for running essential services and power supply to apartments.

“We have 22 high-rise societies in Kaushambi where connections from DG-sets for essential services like lifts, water pumps, etc are separate from those for flats. After Grap comes into effect, we will run only essential power supply from DG-sets while households will run on their individual power backups,” said VK Mittal, president of Kaushambi Apartments RWA.

The electricity department officials, on the other hand, said they are supplying an average of about 23.45 hours of electricity supply daily.

“On our part, we have a lesser number of faults and none of our transmissions or distribution substations is overloaded. In the coming winter season, the demand will further go down and there will be no issues of outages, etc. Further, there is no building in the city which is without an electricity connection,” said RK Rana, chief engineer of Paschimanchal Vidyut Vitaran Nigam Limited.

The DM has directed officials to keep a tab on restaurants, hotels, dhabas, eateries, etc., to ensure that they stop the use of tandoors which use wood or coal as fuel.

“Officials will ensure that such establishments use PNG or LPG instead of coal or wood. Different directions have also been given for mechanical road sweeping, water sprinkling, etc. The chief secretary, in a video conference on Monday, asked us to keep strict tabs on stubble burning,” Pandey added.