Rural Electrification Project across 400 villages in Uttar Pradesh, India

Overview

Jakson successfully executed a large scale rural electrification project at Shrawasti district in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh under the aegis of Government of India’s ambitious Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (erstwhile RGGVY program). Jakson executed this project in a record time frame of two years which helped the state utility (client) connect more than 9000 below-poverty-line (BPL) households across 400 villages in the district to the electricity grid, all of them for the first time. More than 23000 new transmission poles, 300 kilometres of new 11KV lines, 675 no of new distribution transformers, 487 km LT Lines were installed/laid for this project within a geographical spread of more than 1600 square kilometres. The success of this project helped Jakson establish itself as one of the leading organizations in the rural electrification business in India. 

 Client

Madhyanchal Vidyut Vitran Nigam Limited (MVVNL), a government owned electricity utility in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India

 Business Need

Rural electrification has been a key policy program for every successive government in India since independence. With more than 18,000 villages in the country without electricity access, the Government of India launched an ambitious rural electrification program called Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana replacing the former Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana (RGGVY). The key objectives of this revised policy initiative were

• Electrify all villages in India
• Separate feeder supply to ensure power for both farmers and other consumers
• Improvement of Sub-transmission and distribution networks
• Provide metered electricity connections to consumers to reduce DISCOM losses

As a state utility, MVVNL was responsible for implementing this program in rural areas under its jurisdiction. Shrawasti was one such district. To achieve this objective, the client floated a tender for turnkey EPC project and Jakson was chosen as the partner to execute this project. 

 Challenges

• Right of Way Issues – In several areas, local residents opposed construction of overhead distribution lines over their land or households. This problem was addressed by working closely with local administration and client
• Identification of below poverty line (BPL) consumers and collection of documents as per REC norms.
• The identified villages were located in flood prone areas. In our tenure 2 times the areas remain blocked due to water logging. During this period execution work could not be carried out which increased the pressure during the remaining period of the project time-frame

 Solution             

The scope of work for this project included the following activities which was successfully executed by Jakson

• Electrification of below poverty line rural households in approximately 400 villages of the district spread across 1600 sqkm area.
• Related Infrastructure development for electrification of the identified areas that includes 23000 Nos Poles, 300 km New 11KV lines, 675 distribution transformers, 487 km LT Lines and 9000 Nos Service Connections to households
• Capacity building for infrastructure development and electrification - New 66/11 KV and 33/11 KV grid sub-stations
• Civil and electrical works for augmentation/new substations - construction of substation building, house control panels, battery, battery charger, ACDB/DCDB Boards, Erection of substation gantry structures, erection of insulators, erection of bus bars, completion of underground mat work, fencing work, fire wall between power transformer, water drainage and sump pit
• SITC of substation equipment like Power Transformer, Station Transformer, Power and Control Cables, Capacitor Bank, CTs, PTs, Vacuum Circuit Breakers, Earthing materials, Isolators, AB Switch, Insulators, Conductors, Battery & Battery Chargers and ACDB & DCDB boards amongst others
• Metered connection to individual rural households