Residents of the city and suburbs came in for a pleasant surprise on Tuesday with electricity authorities not carrying out the scheduled two-hour load shedding.
C.R. Ramakanthan, a resident of Baba Nagar at Villivakkam, said that from Tuesday the new timing for load shedding — between noon and 2 p.m. — was to come into effect in their locality. When the clock struck twelve it did not happen.
In some areas, residents called up the local fuse-off call centres to know the reason for the power supply not being cut. “Was it because of May Day?” asked a few. They were told that with wind energy picking up, load shedding was avoided.
A senior official of the Tamil Nadu Transmission Corporation (TANTRANSCO) said that load shedding was not resorted to in the urban areas of the State as wind power generation touched almost 2,000 MW on Monday and Tuesday. May Day being a holiday and abundant wind energy available, the corporation was able to provide the relief.
M. Soundariya Preetha adds from Coimbatore: Coimbatore district, which has been facing nearly 10 hours' power cut, is experiencing lesser hours of load shedding during the last three or four days, thanks to wind energy generation.
A. Thangavelu, Chief Engineer of Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation (TANGEDCO) here, told The Hindu that agricultural load had come down with rain in several parts of the district during the last one week and industrial load gone up. Hence, the total consumption remained almost the same.
“We need to get at least 1,000 MW constantly from wind energy to reduce the duration of load shedding,” he said. Yet, power cut in the district had come down by four to six hours a day. There was no load shedding in the night.
Indian Wind Power Association chairman K. Kasthoorirangaian said that wind energy generation would increase in a couple of days. With nearly 7,000 MW of installed wind energy capacity, the State was likely to generate about 3,500 MW of wind energy this year.
In a memorandum to the TANGEDCO, he stated that it should harvest wind energy to the maximum this season.
