Prolonged hours of load shedding are back in western and southern parts of the State with some areas going without power for 10 to 12 hours.
In Madurai, the duration of power cut exceeded nine hours since Tuesday night.
Residents of Tuticorin faced power outage eight times between 10 p.m. on Wednesday and 8 a.m. on Thursday.
As many as 70 villages around Vedasandur and Eriyodu of Dindigul district are facing the danger of crop loss.
Of late, the supply for agricultural connections is being maintained only for three hours a day. Farmers say they are not able to operate their pump sets due to low voltage when the power is supplied after 4 p.m. There is no supply between 6 a.m. and 11 a.m., and noon and 3 p.m.
The Kappalur industrial estate near Madurai has also been experiencing a 12-hour power cut.
In western Coimbatore, there have been spells of power cuts at night for the last three days, apart from six hours of load shedding during day. Industrial units in rural areas of the Coimbatore district have been facing five to eight hours of power cut a day for the last one week.
“It was 10 to 15 hours of load shedding in the city on Wednesday. Inverters do not work for long hours, and in many houses children are unable to sleep well at night and hence, unable to go to school in the morning,” says J. James, president of the Tamil Nadu Association for Cottage and Micro Enterprises.
The latest phase of acute power shortage is attributed to the sudden loss of wind energy — from about 3,800 megawatt on Monday evening it came down to 574 MW on Thursday morning.
Review meeting
Making a review of the status of power generation projects on Thursday morning, Chief Minister Jayalalithaa asked officials to ensure that Vallur, Mettur and North Chennai projects were completed at the earliest.
(With inputs from
M. Soundariya Preetha in Coimbatore, R. Sairam in Madurai, K. Raju in Dindigul and J. Praveen in Tuticorin)
