The Hindu : No end to power woes

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jul 14, 2003

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No end to power woes

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI JULY 13. The Capital seems to be reeling under a severe power crisis following the heavy rain that lashed the city this week. Thousands of residents across the city have gone without electricity for more than 24 hours at a stretch.

Even while no rain was experienced today and power situation was fast coming back to normality, a large number of colonies were still experiencing uninterrupted load-shedding of more than 40 hours: indicating that the Capital this week probably faced one of the worst ever power crisis of the year.

This was not due to shortage of electricity, but due to major power faults which the officials said was because of rain water seeping into the local distribution system.

``It will take time to restore the supply and bring normality as we cannot do much. We have to wait for the moisture in the system to dry. With bright sun shine, today was a much better day for us as we were able to rectify most of the faults,'' said officials of the three discoms, North Delhi Power Limited, BSES Yamuna Power Limited and BSES Rajdhani Power Limited.

However, the officials conceded that this week's power crisis required an introspection on the part of the discoms. "Whatever reason we might give, the fact remains that several areas of the Capital had continued loadshedding for more than 48 hours. This certainly is unacceptable in modern times and that too in a city like Delhi,'' said a senior BSES official, adding: "It is time we stopped blaming the erstwhile Delhi Vidyut Board for all the ills. After all we have been here for more than an year.''

The very fact that the average demand of power on Friday and Saturday was less than 2,000 MW -- which is 700-800 MW less than the daily average -- was an indication of the situation on the ground. The rains only reflected that the discoms were caught unawares. It seems that they had not augmented their resources for such a situation during the monsoon.

Despite their best efforts, officials of the BSES Rajdhani Power Limited were just not able to resume the power supply in Rajouri Garden and adjoining areas even after 24 hours. The neighbouring areas of West Delhi like Subhash Nagar, Tilak Nagar, Hari Nagar, Tihar Village, Mayapuri and Paschim Vihar remained without power for more than 40 hours at a stretch.

Adding to the woes was the major fault which had appeared at the 220 kV Shalimar Bagh grid which hit entire Pitampura, Model Town, Shalimar Bagh and adjoining areas. In East Delhi, the worst hit areas were Samachar Apartments, Loni Road DDA Flats, Dilshad Garden, Vasundhara, Mandawali, Seelampur, Kalyanputi and Shastri Park. All these areas reported power cuts between 8 to 24 hours.

Situation was not much better in Karol Bagh, Paharganj, Nabi Karim, Sadar Bazaar Khari Baoli, Chandani Chowk, Azad Market,

Lajpat Nagar and Mangolpuri. Power cuts were also experienced in Greater Kailash Part-I and II, Nehru Place, Kalkaji, Kailash Colony, East of Kailash, Aruna Asaf Ali Marg, Masjid More, Ludlow Castle, Zafrabad and Bela Road.

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