Voltage fluctuation: Your gadgets’ enemy

It’s a tinderbox situation for Delhi's power consumers. Electrical devices, laptops, television sets, fridges, mobile phones, etc., are in danger of heating up and going bust as the menace of fluctuating voltage is back to haunt Delhi’s power supply system, the Union Power ministry has said.

It’s a tinderbox situation for Delhi's power consumers.

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Electrical devices, laptops, television sets, fridges, mobile phones, etc., are in danger of heating up and going bust as the menace of fluctuating voltage is back to haunt Delhi’s power supply system, the Union Power ministry has said.

In a letter to its Delhi counterpart, the ministry has said that Delhi’s power supply network is fraught with defective ‘capacitors’, the vital electrical component that stabilises the voltage of the electricity supplied.

“There were around 3,000 defective capacitors in the Northern Region including that in Delhi state. These were to be revived by the states during 2009-10,” the letter said.

The ministry has asked Delhi to revive the defective capacitors immediately and speed up the process of installing new ones.

The letter goes on to say that in Delhi’s case, the power transmitted and distributed gets destabilised mainly because the system is designed to carry much less power than what the Capital has been consuming.

“The capacitor requirement was assessed taking into consideration a 4200 MW peak load. However, Delhi's power requirement touched around 4400 MW,” it said.

“Low voltage is a nuisance,” said former Union Power Secretary Anil Razdan.

The Delhi Transco had told the power ministry last year that the city did not need more capacitors to stabilise the voltage.

“We will be installing more capacitors next year. We have already installed some last year,” a senior Transco official told HT.