After a brief lull of two to three days during which heavy rain flooded the city recently, the power cuts are back again. The city and surrounding areas have once again relapsed into daily outages of three hours owing to the increasing gap between requirement and availability of power.
The power cuts are being imposed in two spells of one-and-a-half-hour each, during morning and evening hours respectively. Officials from the APCPDCL attribute the load reliefs to breakdown of two units respectively in NTPC plant and the Thermal Power Station in Vijayawada.
“The power situation is grim. Two units of 500-MW capacity each at NTPC and Vijayawada have tripped on Monday, worsening the power availability,” an official informed.
The downpour has not helped boost up water levels in reservoirs and generation of hydel power, he informed.
The city has been reeling under three-day power cut regime since the beginning of this month, due to widened gap between supply and demand.
However, the situation has eased in the past week due to heavy rainfall and consequent drop in power usage by domestic as well as agricultural consumers.
With the weather brightening up and temperatures soaring on Monday, the consumption is back to normal. However, there had been no respite to the industries.
Industries drawing power from 33-KV feeders continued with a three-day weekly power holiday, while those drawing from 11-KV feeders too are forced to endure a two-day power cut.
In addition, all industries should shut down operations between 6.30 p.m. and 10.30 p.m. every day, to accommodate for the increase in domestic loads.
