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Chandigarh’s aging power infra crumbling in the face of rising summer demand
Power cuts running into hours, be it day or night; calls to electricity dept eliciting no response, complain residents
If the heatwave wasn’t exasperating enough, the frequent power supply disruptions have been aggravating summer woes of city residents, particularly those living in the southern sectors.
From the demand peaking at 383 megawatts (MW) on Wednesday, when the heatwave first started, it rose to 405MW on Thursday, when the temperature soared to 40.8°C, and further to 409MW on Friday.
While the city has adequate power supply to cater to the rising summer demand, it is not backed by a robust transmission system, with upgrades pending for years, causing lines to trip as load increases. Absence of adequate support staff to fix the faults only exacerbates residents’ troubles.
The situation has consistently worsened over the last three days. While on Wednesday, only couple of sectors faced long power cuts, as earlier highlighted by Hindustan Times, by Friday, several areas in the southern belt, including Sectors 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46 and 47 suffered major power outages. Among these, the power cut was scheduled only in parts of Sector 40, as per UT electricity department officials.
“Normally, the power load grows by around 7% every year. This has to be supplemented by upgrade of aging equipment to bolster the transmission system. But since the power privatisation started over the last couple of years, the process has been put on hold. For instance, purchase of more powerful transformers has been delayed and may not be installed this summer,” said an official, requesting anonymity.
Worse, the process to recruit support workforce remains on hold. “More than 400 contract workers, including assistant linemen and linemen, are awaiting contract renewal. This affects repair work and response to complaints,” the official said.
Busy phone lines
Reeling under long unscheduled power cuts and voltage fluctuations, city residents termed the electricity department’s response as callous and torturous.
“Nearly 99% of the time, the complaint centres’ phone numbers remain busy. Even when someone answers, the response is usually that it’s a back-end problem and the call is simply disconnected,” said Hitesh Puri, chairperson, Chandigarh Resident Association Welfare Federation (CRAWFED).
With their phone calls going unanswered, many residents even rushed to the complaint centres for solution, but contended that the staff remained uncooperative and only gave assurances.
On UT’s part, chief engineer CB Ojha said, “There is no shortage of supply even if the demand rises. There was disruption in supply from Punjab side last night. Repairs were going on in Sector 40. Similar outages will not be repeated going forward.”
Mohali in the same boat
The situation is no better in Mohali, where, too, infrastructure upgrade has been hanging fire for years.
According to the Punjab State Power Corporation Limited records, nearly 50% of the 19 grid sub-stations do not have sufficient infrastructure to cater to the burgeoning demand, leading to outages through the day and night.
Yet, three months into summer, the corporation has not been able to ramp up the transformers and transmission lines.
PSPCL superintending engineer Mohit Sood admitted transformers were getting overloaded with increasing demand. “We are working to sort this out at various sub-stations,” he said.
