The Hindu : New Delhi News : Delhiites reel under power cuts

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Saturday, May 21, 2005

New Delhi

New Delhi

Delhiites reel under power cuts

Staff Reporter

Many areas also hit by severe water crisis

NEW DELHI: With the rise in temperature, the power woes of the residents have also increased with many parts of the Capital experiencing long hours of unscheduled power cuts. On Thursday night and Friday afternoon, several parts of the Capital remained without electricity and complaints to the private power distribution companies failed to bring any respite. This also led to severe water crisis in many areas as pumping stations were not able to function due to non-availability of electricity.

The ongoing power crisis is being attributed to the low frequency and shortfall in supply to the Northern Grid from the generating units. In the past three days various generating units have developed snags. On Friday too, at least six units of four power plants remained shut leading to shortfall of over 1,500 MW to the Northern Grid.

"In Delhi, one unit of Badarpur thermal power plant and two units of Indraprastha plant remained shut, while two units of the Singrauli thermal power plant in Uttar Pradesh and one unit of a Rajasthan-based plant also did not produce power resulting in less supply to the Grid. Significantly, for the past three days, the Northern Grid has not only got less supply, but has also been plagued by low frequency, affecting supply to Delhi," said a Transco official. Though there was no crisis of availability of power from the Gird to Delhi, the problem of low frequency made things difficult, the official said, explaining that the efficient functioning of the Grid depends on the "grid discipline" being maintained by the nine States and Union Territories that get power from it -- Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Uttaranchal, Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Chandigarh. "Even if one State draws more power than its allotted quota, it leads to crisis and other States had no choice to go for load-shedding," he added.

On Friday also due to low supply to the Northern Grid, Transco had go for 250 MW of load-shedding despite a decline in peak demand compared to Thursday. "On Friday, the peak demand stood at 2988 MW around noon while this season's highest demand was recorded at 8 p.m. on Thursday when the demand stood at 3168 MW," the Transco official said. The areas that remained affected due to load-shedding included Nangloi, Seelampur, Nand Nagri, Khichripur, Okhla, Tughlakhabad, Vivek Vihar, Ambedkar Nagar, Gopalpur, Rohini, Wazirpur, Dwarka, Uttam Nagar, Tilak Nagar, Laxmi Nagar, Shakarpur, Mandawali, Mehrauli, Najafgarh, Shahdara, Jehangirpuri, Mandawali and Narela. Transco has also informed that due to some repair work, supply would remain affected between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m. on Saturday at Naraina Industrial Area, Naraina Vihar, Naraina village, Sadar Bazar, Gopinath Bazar, Saraswati Garden, Inderpuri and Delhi Cantonment area.

Meanwhile, several residents welfare associations have also complained about long unscheduled power cuts in their areas. According to M.S. Chugh, joint secretary of the South Extension Part-I RWA, all the residential blocks in their area were without power for over five hours beginning midnight. "This summer has been particularly bad for our locality as we have been facing regular power-cuts and repeated complaints to the private power distribution company concerned have failed to bring any result," he added. The cut in electricity supply is also leading to residents facing water crisis as the Delhi Jal Board's pumping stations are unable to supply water. The situation is really grim in South, North and Outer Delhi areas where the supply is mostly dependent on tubewells and underground pumping stations.

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