On 23 November, the surprising news of three college students of the Islamic College of Expertise (IUT) death by electrocution shook the nation.
One of the most buses taking them to a picnic came into contact with an overhead bare 11 kilovolt (kV) electrical wire in Gazipur’s Sreepur.
Moreover the three killed, spherical 60 were left injured from the electrocution.
Such incidents are nothing contemporary in the nation.
On 21 September last year, four folks were electrocuted eventually of a heavy rainfall in Mirpur.
The rain precipitated waterlogging, and a lightning strike broke an electrical wire, which fell into the water.
Lots of utility suppliers, including cable TV operators, net provider suppliers (ISPs), and the dispute-owned land phone operator BDCL, command overhead cables to thunder their companies and products to customers.
All of them portion the same poles utilized by the electricity supply company.
Overhead cables make an eyesore and lift a risk of accidents.
The electrical wires placing esteem cobwebs on the streets steadily pose a first-rate threat to public safety. This brings up the interrogate of a solution— underground cabling.
The dialogue of underground cabling won momentum at the initiating of 2020.
Frail Assert Minister for Vitality, Energy and Mineral Resources, Nasrul Hamid had acknowledged that all overhead electrical traces in major cities, including Dhaka, would be taken underground internal the subsequent 5 years– meaning 2025.
“We are going to enact this to make optimistic uninterrupted and secured vitality supply, no longer handiest for beautification,” he had acknowledged.
As 2024 attracts to a end, the vision of a wi-fi metropolis by 2025 remains some distance away.
Nonetheless, it is miles moral that some development has been made.
Before all the pieces, the promise became once convincing because it came with rapid action and proof.
BPDB signed a contract with Australian firm Energy Tron R&D KIS Community to award the Tk25.30 crore job of taking overhead electrical cables underground in four cities— Sylhet, Cumilla, Chattogram and Mymensingh.
Bangladesh Vitality Trend Board (BPDB) ran a pilot project in Sylhet, making it the first metropolis in the nation to have a avenue freed from tangled overhead cables.
It efficiently initiated underground cabling in the Dargah Gate put of Sylhet.
The avenue and not using a overhead cables grew to become out so stunning that hundreds of americans gathered to peep it.
A seven-kilometre put of the metropolis is put to become cable-free under the pilot project, costing Tk55 crore.
Following this pilot project, underground cabling started in the capital Dhaka.
Electricity connections through underground cables were implemented for the first time in the Monipuri Para put of Tejgaon in early 2022.
Dhaka Vitality Distribution Company (DPDC), a public itsy-bitsy company under the Vitality Division of the authorities’s Ministry of Vitality, Energy and Mineral Resources, is guilty for electricity distribution in Dhaka and its adjacent Narayanganj.
In the case of underground cabling, how mighty development have we made to this point?
To answer this interrogate, the dialogue have to focal point on DPDC’s mega project, the Growth and Strengthening of Vitality System Community (ESPSN).
The project is price a groundbreaking deal of Tk20,500 crore to make optimistic a salvage, salvage, and uninterrupted electricity supply in the Dhaka South Metropolis Corporation and adjacent Narayanganj.
Signed in 2019, the project is funded by the Chinese Exim Monetary institution.
As phase of this project, it involves changing overhead electricity traces with underground cables.
Dhanmondi has been taken as a pilot put for Dhaka.
Here, 190 km of overhead electricity cables are being taken underground. Of those, about 115 km are of 11 kV overhead traces, and 75 km are 0.4 kV traces.
These are distribution traces to present electricity to households.
All overhead electrical cables in a say put of Dhanmondi, including Satmasjid Highway, Mirpur Highway, Metropolis College, and Greenherald College put, are planned to be moved underground, leaving no visible cables.
It targets to remodel the overhead distribution community alongside both facets of the 19-kilometre most valuable avenue from Bangabhaban to Jahangir Gate and the 10-kilometre most valuable avenue from Gabtoli to Azimpur into an underground distribution community.
It additionally involves developing 40 substations in the metropolis and keen the overhead cables of Hatirjheel Lake underground.
In September 2023, BBC Bangla reported that the Metropolis Corporation’s effort to rob away placing wires from Dhaka metropolis became once stopped after net and satellite tv for computer TV cable operators pushed help, exhibiting microscopic hobby in the project.
A senior reliable from the Vitality Division told UNB in March this year, “Despite quite so a lot of invitations from DPDC, no net or TV cable operator agreed to rob part. They were even offered to affix for free, but there became once no response.”
Before all the pieces, the planned work of the project became once delayed for almost two years due to the the Covid-19 outbreak.
However it additionally took a protracted time to finalise the project plans.
“Approval of the Metropolis Corporation and the Roads and Highways Division is required for avenue excavation. Getting permissions from a form of departments steadily takes a protracted time,” Engineer Abdullah Noman, Managing Director of DPDC told The Industrial Customary.
“Even if we procure permission, digging up roads for work disrupts public lifestyles. Our areas are extremely densely populated. We steadily must quit work for a form of reasons which causes prolong,” he added.
With an excuse of the Covid-19, the project has already been prolonged once by two and a half years, pushing the closing date to June 2024.
Nonetheless, it tranquil remains incomplete and desires but every other extension.
“We now have asked for an extension by spherical two years. Confidently, this might perchance increasingly be granted soon,” the DPDC reliable confirmed.
“For the time being, we’re engaged on undergrounding the sub-location to the sub-location community, which is nice for medium and high-voltage cables of 33 kV and 132 kV. The cabling for contemporary sub-stations is being completed underground, and some existing ones are being shifted as successfully,” he added.
However is underground cabling the last system to the messy urban cityscape? Are we heading toward total undergrounding then?
Noman believes that, technically, or no longer it is no longer mandatory for all electrical cables to chase underground, except the stunning aspect.
“Medium and high-voltage cables desires to be underground, whereas 11 kV and nil.4 kV cables can remain overhead. There’s no longer a say with that. Overhead cabling is additionally total in a form of countries. Nonetheless, all the pieces is unorganised and chaotic in our nation. However the cables placed overhead have to be successfully arranged and secured,” he defined.
What about our South Asian neighbouring countries?
The adoption of underground cabling is gradually increasing in the put but it remains itsy-bitsy due to the high costs and infrastructure challenges.
In India, cities esteem Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Chennai have started transitioning to underground cabling.
Sri Lanka has made valuable development, particularly in Colombo, the capital. Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital, has additionally begun efforts to set up underground vitality traces.
In Pakistan, underground vitality cables are chanced on in aspects of Islamabad and Karachi, particularly in more moderen inclinations and industry districts.
Underground cabling, then all over again, is never any longer flawless; it has its have put of disadvantages.
To illustrate, or no longer it is way more costly, for the reason that cost of undergrounding cables is several events elevated than overhead vitality traces.
Overhead wire breaks might perchance presumably be repaired in hours but underground repairs can rob days and even weeks.
Also they are more liable to damage from floor slide.
The 2011 Christchurch earthquake in New Zealand resulted in the damage of 360 kilometres of high-voltage underground cables, main to novel vitality outages across Christchurch.
