Several areas across East and Central Delhi faced a major power blackout on Wednesday lasting for as long as five hours as two towers of the Delhi Transco limited toppled. The towers of 220 KV each fell at Usmanpur Pushta area in East Delhi due to thunderstorms and rains which occurred on Wednesday afternoon. Residents of these areas may continue to face power cuts as restoration is expected to take several days.
large part of East Delhi covering areas like Patparganj, Karkardooma, Preet Vihar, Ganesh Nagar, Krishna Nagar, Kashmere Gate, Shahdara and Jhilmil were severely affected. Power cuts were reported in these areas ranging from two to five hours. Although Central Delhi was comparatively less affected, yet areas like Paharganj, Anand Parbat and Nabi Karim also faced outages.
“Two towers of 220 KV each collapsed on Wednesday afternoon, around 2 pm. They are a part of our Wazirabad-Kashmere Gate line. The incident happened because of unusual weather phenomena. It was precisely because of the storm that was followed by heavy rains. Power supply has been restored through emergency restoration system (ERS),” said an official of the DTl.
The power situation in these areas is expected to remain grim as the complete restoration of the towers will take not less than 10 days. “Although the maximum peak load has been less being recorded at 4879 MW on Wednesday, we may have to resort to load shedding in the coming days for the area,” said a discom official.