Residents of the city will no longer have to go without power for almost the entire day when there are outages for maintenance work.
The Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation (Tangedco) has shortened the duration of its power shutdowns by three hours. Outages will now last from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., instead of until 5 p.m. The change will take effect from Wednesday.
A senior Tangedco official said the two-hour scheduled power cuts were also only being carried out when necessary, and generally in the mornings between 8 and 10 a.m. He said the pattern of heavy power consumption over the past two months was in the mornings when residents used water heaters.
Since Tangedco had met its peak demand of 12,799 MW on January 29, the power position was now comfortable, and outages could be reduced, he said.