Most areas in the city and its surroundings experienced excruciating power cuts during the stifling afternoon hours of Thursday. The outages ranged from two hours to three hours in each area. Unlike the usual power cuts, the ones on Thursday spanned across a wide area in each territory, resulting in frantic calls to the respective fuse-off call centres and field officials.
Soaked in sweat
“Power went off at about 1.30 p.m. and was restored only at 3.30 p.m., leaving us exhausted and soaked in sweat. A number of calls to the Emergency Control Room at 155333 remained futile, as the line was continuously busy,” Kothapet resident Seetharam Reddy said. Power supply was also cut off to many parts of Old City, including Falaknuma, Jangammet, Jahanuma, Hafeez Baba Nagar, Chandrayangutta and others. CPDCL field officials said these were emergency load reliefs enforced by the APTransco in order to tide over the sudden shortfall in power supply.
Accordingly, a massive cut down was imposed during afternoon hours on the transmission company’s Extra High Tension substations at Ghanpur, Malkaram, Chandrayangutta, and Bandlaguda, an official said. Later, the power cuts were shifted to the other part of the city, affecting substations at Gachibowli, Kondapur and Kukatpally, affecting lakhs of consumers.
Power cuts were imposed after the breakdown of units at NTPC Simhadri and the Rayalaseema Thermal Power Project created a sudden power deficit. Approximately 700 Megawatts (MW) of supply was affected due to the breakdown, officials informed. No power cut schedules will be announced as the shortage is not likely to last long, they said.
