The Hindu : Front Page : Frequent outage keeps people on their toes

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Thursday, May 08, 2008
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Frequent outage keeps people on their toes

Staff Reporter

BHUBANESWAR: While the rapidly rising mercury level has already left people sweating profusely in the capital city, frequent power failure has made their life miserable.

Thanks to increasing use of air-conditioning appliances, the old and poor electrical infrastructure can no more withstand the huge loads resulting in power breakdowns. Those who are at the receiving end are the lower middle class families.

In the electrical section at Kalyan Mandap near Nayapalli, on an average, a power sub-station receives 12 complaints daily on power breakdown during winter season, it goes up to an average 25 complaints daily in peak summer.

Interestingly, most of the complaints now coming are from community. Combined use of electricity consuming instruments had its impact on quality of power supplied to the denizens.

Usually one household consumes 2 kilo watt electricity by using fans, refrigerators, lights and other appliances such as washing machine. But when it switches over to ACs, the consumption gets doubled to 4 kilo watt. As per the survey, as many as 80 ACs were being used in a small stretch between Nua Sahi and Post Office Square in Nayapalli.

Sources said on paper demand for electricity was low so the department was not ready to upgrade the capacity of transformer, for which low voltage could be seen during evening hours.

Meanwhile, the market of ACs is growing astronomically. During last 10 days, Raj Electronics, a leading electronic store in Bapuji Nagar, had been selling 35 ACs everyday. Similar was the situation in all other locality of Bhubaneswar.

“Due to rise in temperature, demand for ACs has increased many times. We cannot meet the demand for air conditioning appliances,” Satish Kar, manager of Raj Electronics, said. As per estimation, more than 500 ACs are sold in Bhubaneswar market.

People have already taken to the street due to frequent power failure. In Dumduma area, angry locale besieged the transformer office. Reports from other areas also indicated that complaints from community were pouring in.

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