Whereas cloudy conditions coupled with light rain showers amid thunder and lightening brought some relief from scorching summer heat, unscheduled power cuts have only worsened the normal life in different parts of the region since Monday.
Though the weather conditions showed a bit of improvement since Tuesday afternoon, the power supply that remained disrupted for eight hours from 5 pm till 1 am on Monday night, continued to remain disrupted at regular interval on Tuesday.
The disturbance in the power supply that was interestingly not visible during the elections period, has taken place close on the heels of Chief Minister Harish Rawat’s announcement that the Government is committed to provide round the clock power supply to its citizens.
Though increasing atmospheric temperature has given rise to demand for electricity, availability of power has also shown improvement of late in the Himalayan State. Yet, frequent tripping continued to hit power supply throughout the day in different parts of Haldwani and other parts of the State on Tuesday.
According to the figures provided by the Uttarakhand Power Corporation limited (UPCl), whereas gross availability of power in Uttarakhand is around 31.88 million unit (mu) per day i.e. about 12.22 mu per day from domestic sources, about 13.73 mu per day from central pool and rest about 5.93 mu per day from other sources, the demand for power has constantly been around 32 mu per day in the hill State.
The fact of the matter is that despite availability of electricity according to the demand as the above mentioned figures suggest, unscheduled power cuts have started to hit the normal life as unscheduled power cuts also lead to disruption in smooth supply of drinking water particularly in urban areas which are dependent on power driven drinking water distribution system.
The demand for power, as the experts here believe, may go up if the atmospheric temperature rises during the summer seasons ahead in Uttarakhand.