Long and frequent power outages hit societies along Dwarka eway, Golf Course Ext Road

Residents along Dwarka Expressway face power outages lasting up to five hours due to maintenance issues, affecting over 1,500 families in several sectors.

At least eleven residential societies between Sector 84 to 102 along the Dwarka Expressway and the Golf Course Extension Road have been facing frequent and long power outages for the last four to five days either due to faults or maintenance-related issues, alleged residents on Friday.

According to residents, the outages continued for around five hours, longer than what the Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam (DHBVN) officials informed them through messages on WhatsApp groups.

According to residents, the outages continued for around five hours, longer than what the Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam (DHBVN) officials informed them through messages on WhatsApp groups.

Praveen Thakur, a resident of Conscient Habitat in Sector 99A, told HT that for the past several days, four to five hours long outages were taking place continuously.

“The cause of these outages is not clear yet. At least five residential societies in Sector 99 along with Garhi Colony and Garhi village were affected from these outages,” he said.

Santosh Singh, a resident of a Pareena Laxmi society in Sector 99A, said that outages last an hour longer than what was communicated to them by discom officials.

“On Thursday, the authorities alerted us in a WhatsApp group about a two-hour long outage due to maintenance at 11.35 am. However, the supply was restored by 2.15 pm,” he said.

Sunil Sarin, a resident of Imperial Garden in Sector 102 and a co-convener of the citizen-led group, Dwarka Expressway Gurugram Development Authority, said at least 1,500 families living in three societies in the sector are affected and the outages have occurred for the last eight to ten days.

In Sector 84, residents of Pivotal Diwan society claimed that they did not have power supply for the last 20 hours. Abhinit Kumar, one of the residents, said the outage started late Thursday night and power supply was not restored even till Friday night. “We had tried to contact discom officials multiple times but none responded,” he said.

When asked about the issue, a DHBVN official said that the outages are a result of tree pruning and several other maintenance works being carried out. “However, the outages are not as long as described by the residence,” he said, adding that alerts are always sent to them on groups about the scheduled outages lasting one to two hours.

The official added that the 220 kV substation of Haryana Vidyut Prasaran Nigam Limited in Sector 99 is not functional yet. “Once functional, it will bring relief to residents in the area. The substation was expected to be functional by March,” he said.

Meanwhile, residents of Golf Drive society in Sector 63 alleged that a 24-hour long outage took place on Thursday, due to faults in a 11kV underground feeder supplying power from a 66 kV substation in Sector 56 which was damaged several days back due to digging work.

Deepali Sah, a residents of the society, said the outage started at 10 am. “Supply was restored for five to six minutes in between. The power was fully restored only by 1pm on Friday. However, outage started again soon,” she said.

Sah said that most of the residents working from home had to make alternate arrangements. “My work also suffered. Phones, laptops, inverters and other backups had got drained out. Outages started taking place for the last three days,” she said.

A DHBVN official said that the fault in the underground feeder was traced and work was going on to fix it soon. “This feeder needs to be changed along with a control box. Due to the damage, long outages are taking place in the sectors,” he said.

Sattar Khan, DHBVN executive engineer, Badshahpur, said the teams are on the ground and the outage issue due to the faulty feeder will be fixed permanently. “The damaged materials will be replaced immediately to end the outages. We will also be looking into the society’s internal infrastructure to see if there are any faults there,” he said, adding that the outage in Sector 63 was due to a major fault in the feeder, which took place all of a sudden, hence no prior alert could be sent for them.