SCADA not working successfully in Patna

Patna, May 31: The supervisory control and data acquisition (Scada) system, which Bihar State Electricity Board had inaugurated with much fanfare last year to provide better facilities to customers through its hi-tech system, has gone haywire.

The Scada system, which chief minister Nitish Kumar inaugurated on August 26 last year, was supposed to be a consumer-friendly system that would provide instant billing and round-the-clock customer care centre to deal with customer grievances apart from keeping tabs on the current load on all power sub-stations.

The hi-tech system, which was supposed to work through multiple communication system such as optical fibre, BSNL’s leased lines, radio frequency, has not been working for the past four months.

All 45 power sub-stations and 30 billing centres of Patna Electric Supply Undertaking (Pesu) were designed to be linked with each other so that consumers of any area could have made payments in any other division or could have lodged his/her complaint at the Pesu Scada centre’s call centre located at Board Colony round-the-clock.

Under the Scada system, a meter reader can instantly issue bills to customers and also collect payment from them through his hand-held billing machine. But unfortunately out of 10 divisions of Pesu, this system is working only in the Gardanibagh division. Even in Gardanibagh, only bills are generated instantly but payments are not being accepted as the much-hyped Scada system could never take off in its full form.

Similarly, the call centre is supposed to work round-the-clock and lodge all types of complaints related to billing disputes, fuse calls, transformer fires and snapping of cables among others but the call centre’s back-up battery has gone dead, forcing operations at the centre to come to a halt.

The system, which was also supposed to connect all the 45 power sub-stations under Pesu’s jurisdiction had the energy accounting. facility. However, energy accounting could not be done owing to fault in optical fibre. Pesu, however, is making efforts to streamline the process but it has some inherent problems.

Pesu general manager S.K.P. Singh admitted that the system is not working and said: “We have started the spot billing facility from Gardanibagh division. Consumers of the division are still enjoying the facility. But unfortunately, the expansion of this facility to another division got delayed as the system took time for transferring data. At present, the process of transferring data with regard to Patliputra and Guljarbagh divisions is being carried out as spot billing has to be started in these divisions.”

On the non-functional call centre, Singh said the battery would be changed by June 30.