With the mercury soaring to the 45°C mark in the national Capital, power demand too touched a new high on Friday. The consumption of power in Delhi in the past 24 hours broke all previous records to settle at 108.601 million units (MU). To add to the woes of residents, several areas across Delhi faced power outages to the tune of three to four hours.
“The total power consumption on June 5 was recorded as 108.601 MU which is the highest ever consumption recorded in a day. In 2012, the consumption on a single day was 107.363 MU, whereas, on 2013 it was 105.32 MU,” said an official in the power department.
Meanwhile, there seems to be no respite for city dwellers as power outages continue. Many areas of the national Capital may continue to face planned blackouts for a few more days as repairs to the power towers and lines which were damaged in the storm that hit the city last week are taking time, Delhi lieutenant-Governor Najeeb Jung said.
“Before the storm struck, we were generating about 5,000 MW of electricity, which was reduced to 1,000 MW (due to the storm). We are now producing 4,600-4,700MW. The problem is that some big towers and lines fell in the storm and repairing them would take some time. Due to rising temperatures, the demand for power has shot up over 5,200 MW, which we cannot meet. So, there could be
blackouts for another three to four days to cope with the crisis,” added Jung.
The temperature in the national Capital touched a record high of 44.7 degrees Celsius on Thursday and the city faced a near peak demand for power at 5,250MW. The peak demand last June of 5,653MW may be surpassed by the weekend, according to Delhi Government officials.