With gensets banned, BSES powers India-B'desh T20I in Delhi

At a time when the air quality index (AQI) in the capital has plummeted to public health emergency levels, the India-BanglaDesh T20 match played at the Arun Jaitley (formerly Feroz Shah Kotla) Stadium was illuminated solely by grid power, Delhi electricity distribution company (discom) BSES said on Monday.

The cricket match here on Saturday was powered by supply from the BSES Yamuna Power Ltd (BYPL) as the use of diesel gensets in Delhi-NCR has been banned by Environment Pollution Control Authority (EPCA) in October 2017, a BSES statement said.

"DDCA (Delhi District Cricket Association) had an electricity connection of 1,800 KW at the stadium. The organisation approached BYPL for an additional load of 1,500 KW. Thus, a total electricity load of 3,300 KW (3.3 MW) was required at the stadium," it said.

Absence of diesel gensets help prevent 20 tonnes of carbon dioxide (Co2) from being released in capital's environment, it said.

"The network was scaled-up in record time to supply the additional 80 per cent electricity load. State-of-the-art technologies, including SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Access), were deployed to monitor power-supply, and a team of 75 BSES officials stationed at the venue to take care of any unforeseen contingency," it added.

According to the discom, if gensets were used for power supply in the stadium, it would have consumed around 7,500 litres of diesel, which would have resulted in emission of 20 tonnes of Co2, 120 kg of nitrogen oxide and 4 kg of PM 2.5 emission in the atmosphere.

Commenting on the development, BYPL Chief Executive P.R. Kumar said: "Working closely with the DDCA and DTL, BYPL lived-up to the challenge and routed power from multiple sources to provided uninterrupted and reliable power supply during the match."IANS