Delhi sweats it out, outages add to misery

Capital suffered yet another hot and humid day on Thursday and the rest of the week is going to be no better. The sultry conditions pushed up the power demand to a record 4,909MW during the day.

Capital suffered yet another hot and humid day on Thursday and the rest of the week is going to be no better. The sultry conditions pushed up the power demand to a record 4,909MW during the day.

HT Image

"There may be some change in the weather after three days. Till then no rainfall," said BP Yadav, director, weather forecast, India Meteorological Department.

The good news, however, is that the monsoon is on schedule and will keep its June 29 date with the Capital.

The maximum temperature on Thursday was 38.7ºC, a degree above normal. The minimum at 30ºC was two degrees above normal.

Wednesday night was particularly tough for those living in the east and central Delhi areas, which faced long outages due to snapping of two transmission lines.

Power utilities say they have made arrangements anticipating a peak demand of 5,100 MW, but the transmission and distribution infrastructure is coming in the way.

Delhi Transco even after spending more than Rs 500 crore on upgrade of substations in the past year struggles with snapped cables and break down of transformers.