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Wednesday, Sep 10, 2008
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Residents heave a sigh of relief

S. Ganesan

TIRUCHI: Residents in Tiruchi have been pleasantly surprised as the city has been largely free from power cuts over the past three days.

Though a four-hour load shedding had been announced for domestic connections in the city, there were no disruptions in most places since Sunday. Residents in a few places reported load shedding, but said those were for much less than the four-hour period.

However, there has been no disruption in power supply between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., in the entire city, bringing major relief to residents. “We express our gratitude to Chief Minister M.Karunanidhi for taking steps to improve the situation,” says M.Sekaran, Convenor, Federation of Consumer and Service Organisations of the city. Officials of Tamil Nadu Electricity Board (TNEB) said the power shortage has eased owing to an improvement in wind power generation and a drop in demand. “We have been receiving about 800 to 1,000 MW of wind energy. The rains over the past few days have also brought down the demand,” a senior TNEB official said. Relief has been given for domestic consumers in the other semi-urban and rural centres too of the region covering Tiruchi, Karur, Perambalur, Pudukottai, Thanjavur, Tiruvarur and Nagapattinam districts.

Tiruchi Collector T.Soundiah claimed that the duration of the power holiday in places other than the city had been reduced to three hours though a five-hour holiday had been announced. “We have done away with power cuts between 10 p.m. and 6 p.m. in most places. The duration of load shedding during the evenings has also been relaxed. However, we may have to resort to the one hour load shedding between 6 and 10 p.m. depending on the power availability,” the TNEB official said.

Load shedding for three-phase connections to industries continued in the region. TNEB officials said a meeting has been convened with high tension power consumers in Chennai on Saturday to discuss the issue, including extension of concessions for captive power generation.

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