Residents face long power outages after continuous downpour in Gurugram

About 5,000 families living in Tulip Violet were left without power supply from 1am till 6.30pm on Thursday

The continuous downpour in Gurugram on late Wednesday and early Thursday resulted in power faults in several areas, leaving residents without electricity for hours – magnifying the horrors of waterlogging and traffic that the city already grapples with in monsoon.

DHBVN officials said that a large number of complaints poured at their control room from various locations in the city which were attended and fixed by the ground teams. (Parveen Kumar/HT Photo)

Officials from Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam Ltd said that local faults, mainly caused due to short circuits from rainwater, were behind most of these outages, besides transformer or feeder malfunction or conductor damage. Officials said that while most of these faults were fixed within a few hours, in some areas it ended up dragging for more than 17 hours.

About 5,000 families living in Tulip Violet were left without power supply from 1am on Thursday due to a fault in their 33kV cable in their switching station, officials said. The fault, which was an internal issue of the township, could be fixed only by 6.30pm after DHBVN sent its ground team for assistance.

PK Chauhan, DHBVN superintending engineer, Circle-II, said that there was no malfunction in their feeder and the power supply from the 220kV substation of Haryana Vidyut Prasaran Nigam Ltd providing electricity to the area was also smooth.

“We sent our foreman to assist the team of electricians of the society to help them in finding the fault and get it repaired as soon as possible,” he said.

Ashish Kalla, a resident of the society, said that none were able to reply when the power supply would be restored. “I only got to know from RWA members that there was a problem in the grid as told by the technicians. When backup power supply is provided, residents are charged ₹25 per unit. In such a scenario, one ends up paying a bill equivalent to the power consumed for up to five days in normal condition,” he said.

Dhurv Bansal, representative of the DLF City residents, said that a five-hour outage affected at least 100 to 150 houses in DLF Phase-I on Wednesday evening after a short circuit due caused by rain resulted in a fire on an electric pole near Block-H. “All metres and the power supply cables on the pole were damaged which had to be replaced,” he added.

DHBVN officials said that a large number of complaints poured at their control room from various locations in the city which were attended and fixed by the ground teams.