Reduced power generation from the hydro power stations of the state coupled with reduced availability from the central pool caused outages in various parts of the state on Tuesday. To add to the woes of the people of the state, the Northern Regional load Dispatch Centre (NRlDC), which is responsible to ensure integrated operation of power system in northern region, expressed its inability to provide a corridor in eastern sector for the power bought by the Uttarakhand Power Corporation limited (UPCl) from the Methone power plant owned by TATA company in Orrisa.
The spokesperson of UPCl, Madhusudan said that the corporation had bought power from the plant of TATA by tender process in which the state would have got 75 MW of power daily in the month of October. The state would not get this power now. Uttarakhand received only 12.24 Million Units (MU) against allotted 16 MU of power from the central pool on Tuesday.
The UPCl retorted to an outage of three hours in rural areas of Haridwar and Udham Singh Nagar districts and two hours in cities of Garhwal and Kumaon division till 4 pm on Tuesday. Similarly the residents of the Kashipur and Roorkee faced a power cut of two hours. The industrial units of the state also faced problem as non Continuous industry of Kumaon and Garhwal including SIIDCUl faced a power cut of two hours.
Madhusudan said that due to non availability of 75 MW power from the Tata company the UPCl has decided to purchase an additional 400 MU of power from the central pool. The UPCl would also get the 25 MW of power supplied by the Meghalaya in the month of October.
The UPCl spokesperson said that the Managing Director of UPCl, SS Yadav and Director Operations, G K Sharma personally monitored the activities to restore power supply to the Herbertpur and Sahaspur areas of Dehradun on Tuesday. The power
supplies in these two areas were disturbed at 8.45 pm on Monday. The UPCl team traced the fault in the switch yard of the Dhakrani power station and corrected it due which the power supply to Herbertpur and Sahaspur could be restored at 1.30 pm on Tuesday.