Industrial production suffered partially and hospitals had to attend to emergency operations by advancing the schedules as the blackout by the EPDCL continued for third consecutive day on Wednesday.
The situation was better than the previous two days as power supply to the industries such as Visakhapatnam Steel Plant, which had dedicated feeder, were spared.
“Our priority was to ensure supply, during the day, to essential services like government hospitals, drinking water, and railway traction. After power was restored at 6 p.m., we restricted load to industries so as to provide normal supply to the households,” EPDCL Director (Projects) V. Krishna, who is holding additional charge of operations, told The Hindu .
As against allotment of 1,345 megawatt by the State Load Despatch Centre for industries and 50 lakh domestic consumers of Visakhapatnam, Vizianagaram, Srikakulam, East and West Godavari districts, EPDCL restricted the load up to 1,367 megawatt after normal supply during the evening.
IT units worst-hit
A day-and-night watch is being kept on grid frequency to prevent breakdown of the system.
Hospitals preferred to attend to emergency services. In LV Prasad Eye Hospital, some of the scheduled operations were performed from early hours before power employees strike resumed at around 9 a.m., mainly to have better lighting in the operation theatres.
IT units suffered losses due to power blackout during the day at Rushikonda and Duvvada, as maintaining operations with generators was very expensive.
Malls, big shops, and jewellery outlets had to bank on generators to cash in on the festival-eve demand.
Medium, small and micro enterprises had to shut down their operations due to daylong blackout.
Banking operations also suffered severely following server problem.
