Several localities in the Capital have been reeling under power cuts over the last couple of days as peak-hour electricity consumption continues to touch a new high. On Tuesday, the peak power demand in Delhi was recorded at 6,526 MW — the highest in any city.
The power demand peaked at 3.31 p.m. on Tuesday. On Monday too, the peak power consumption was as high as 6,361 MW. On Tuesday, several areas across the city faced long power cuts, some for as long as four hours. These were Narela, Sangam Vihar, Uttam Nagar, Azadpur and Najafgarh.
Sweltering heat
As Delhi sweat under an unusually blazing sun, use of fans and air conditioners has increased drastically in a city of 17 million people over the past few days.
Experts said the past few days have not only witnessed high temperatures but the minimum temperatures too have been relatively high.
The maximum temperatures have been hovering between 44 degree Celsius and 47 degrees Celsius, and the minimum temperatures have also remained as high as around 34 degrees Celsius.
With demand for power expected to rise sharply and surpass the estimated demand of 6,600 MW this year during peak summer, there are fears that power cuts could get worse.
Last year too, in May-June, power demand had breached the 6,000-MW mark for the first time, leading to long power cuts.
B.S. Vohra, president of the East Delhi Residents’ Welfare Association, said compared to last year, the demand had only risen by 5%.
The discoms, he said, should be prepared for such situations.
‘Lack of preparedness’
“Why should the residents suffer due to lack of preparedness of the government and the discoms? If they do not receive payment on time they charge us extra, but what happens in such cases of power cuts?” he said.
Delhi Power Secretary Varsha Joshi said the discoms have been ordered to keep pace with the population, but certain problems in the network are likely to occur in certain areas when catering to such high demand.
Extra power
“When temperatures rose on Sunday, we pre-empted the high power demand and ordered the discoms to make arrangements for extra power. On Sunday, the power cuts were not felt, mainly because we saved between 600 MW and 700 MW power from commercial establishments,” Ms. Joshi told The Hindu .
Power experts, however, said the performance of discoms in the city has not been bad considering the high power demand.
The fact that the network was able to withstand the load of over 6,500 MW means the system is robust, an expert said.
Experts also said that public is equally responsible for the outages. Power thefts, overloading and resistance in setting up transformers affect services.
Sriniwas Bharghav, an expert, said generally the network cools down at night. However, in the past few years, the night time demand has also been high.
BSES, one of the discoms, said residents can contact them in case of power cuts via their helpline number 39999707 in BRPL areas and 39999808 in the BYPL areas.
