New Delhi, July 14 -- Even as extreme humidity is making life tough for Delhiites, the city witnessed long power outages on Friday.
Due to technical glitches, power supply from the Dadri power plant dropped by approximately 1,000MW. Two units of the National Thermal Power Corporation's (NTPC) Dadri plant weren't functioning.
In addition, one 220KV line that supplies power to south and east Delhi tripped, aggravating the situation.
There were power cuts even though the demand hovered around 4,600MW, far below the highest demand of 5,640MW this summer.
"Right from 11am onwards, there was no power supply. Even after the power tariff hike, the situation has not improved," said Amrita Kumar, a resident of east Delhi's Mayur Vihar.
A senior Delhi government official said, "Two Dadri units were not functioning, resulting in a shortage of nearly 1,000MW, and 80 per cent of this power comes to Delhi. To fill the gap between demand and supply, power discoms were drawing heavily from the grid. There was overdrawing to the tune of approximately 750 MW by all the three distribution companies."
According to the discoms, Delhi Transco Limited's 220 KV Wazirabad-Geeta Colony line tripped, leading to power cuts in south and east Delhi.
South Delhi areas such as Lajpat Nagar, East of Kailash, Munirka, New Friends Colony, Jamia Nagar, Zakir Nagar and Maharani Bagh were affected. Power department officials said the load of only the Wazirabad-Geeta Colony line was affected and that it was shifted to another line.
"The situation was difficult, especially in east Delhi because three lines of power distribution company BSES have not been working for the past several days. Due to this, they were unable to shift the load from one line to another," added the official.
For instance, the GhondaWazirabad line of BSES has not been functioning since June 22. Similarly, the Ghazipur-Vivek Vihar line has also not been working from June 29 and the Ghazipur-Ghondli line stopped functioning on May 13.
According to officials, east Delhi areas such as Mayur Vihar, Ashok Nagar, Patparganj, Laxmi Nagar, among others were affected.
Published by HT Syndication with permission from Hindustan Times.
