As sultry weather conditions continue to haunt the national Capital, the city’s power demand is refusing to climb below the 5,000 MW mark. Even as various power utilities claim to be well-prepared to meet the expected 6,000 MW demand, the city is reeling under frequent and prolonged power cuts to almost seven hours. While local faults in the network of distribution companies are plaguing the continuous supply of power in the city, the State-owned Delhi Transco limited (DTl) is also grappling with frequent tripping of its transmission network.
Power demand in the city has been on a steady rise - increasing at a rate of around eight per cent over the last few years. On Monday too, the power demand again rose to 5,706 MW while the highest so far has been recorded at 5,810 MW on July 11. The increase in power demand over the past five days, fuelled by local and transmission faults on the part of respective power utilities has resulted in power cuts ranging from one to two hours and in certain areas like Okhla, Uttam Nagar, Dwarka, Najafgarh for five to six hours.
East Delhi areas like Mayur Vihar Phase I, II and III, Yamuna Vihar, Ganesh Nagar, Kondli, Shahdara and Geeta Colony have been ‘perennial’ victims to power cuts. “We do not even need any notification now because it is ubiquitous that we would not get power supply 24x7. We face daily outages to the tune of two hours,” said Payal Sarvari, a resident of Mayur Vihar Phase III.
Similarly West Delhi too is facing the brunt of daily loadshedding even if the areas are not mentioned under the list of the discoms’ planned outages. Areas like Dwarka, Uttam Nagar, Vikaspuri, Najafgarh, Maharani Enclave and Paschim Vihar have been witnessing frequent outages in this region.
Even in South Delhi areas like Malviya Nagar and CR Park, there have been power cuts with the former witnessing one for as much as seven hours on Sunday due to a local fault in BYPl’s network. In North Delhi, several areas such as Jahangirpuri, Pitampura, Tiggipur, Civil lines, Model Town, Wazirabad, Azadpur, Shakti Nagar, Gopalpur, Gulabi Bagh and Subzi Mandi had suffered power supply restrictions on Saturday night and Sunday morning due to technical snags in DTl grid sub-stations in Gopalpur and Subzi Mandi.