As mercury soars, power cuts and voltage fluctuations return to haunt residents
With the rapid rise in temperature over the past couple of days, complaints of power cuts and voltage fluctuations in the residential colonies of the city have also increased exponentially.
The maximum daytime temperature in the city on Saturday was recorded between 44 and 45 degrees Celsius, compelling the residents to stay inside their homes. On the same day, however, the city’s power distribution company, Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam (DHBVN), recorded more than 1,500 complaints from across the city regarding power cuts and voltage fluctuations.
Sushant Lok, Mayfield Gardens, DLF Phase-3, Palam Vihar, New Palam Vihar, sectors 21, 22, 23 and other areas witnessed power cuts at least three to four times during the course of the day.
Vishnu Khanna, a resident of Sushant Lok-1, said, “Saturday was particularly terrible as we had power cuts at least three to four times. Over all, we had a three-hour-long power cut on Saturday, when the temperature outside was soaring. We got restless as we did not expect such a sudden rise in temperature followed by power cuts. We have been facing summer-time power cuts due to inadequate transformer capacity and related infrastructure. The work on smart grid remains incomplete and this leads to scheduled load shedding for maintenance purpose. These all are perennial complaints of residents, although the officials are least bothered to improve situation in any way.”
Mayfield Garden residents also complained of power cuts due to short circuit and ongoing maintenance work by the electricity department.
“A high tension wire developed a fault in our area and that caused power disruption for one-and-a-half hours. The department takes lot of time to rectify the fault and restore electricity. Short circuits keep on happening as tree branches have covered the electricity wires at several places. They need pruning,” said DC Yadav, resident of Mayfield Garden.
Due to the ongoing smart grid work and maintenance of existing electricity infrastructure, the department currently goes for load shedding and scheduled power cuts in one area or the other in the city.
Bhawani Shankar Tripathy, Sector 23-A resident, said, “We had two-and-half-hour-long hour power cut with high voltage fluctuation on Saturday.”
Most of the complaints pertained to power cuts, followed by voltage fluctuations, complaints of single-phase line, metre burning and transformer fuses getting damaged.
As per DHBVN’s record, in the last five days, i.e. from Tuesday to Saturday, the city’s electricity consumption rose from 1.84 crore units to 2.13 crore units, thereby recording an additional consumption of 29 lakh units.
“There are power cuts and some fluctuations as maintenance works are going on at places and we are trying our best to keep the distribution uninterrupted. We have received complaints from the residents and are trying to fix the problems,” said Joginder Singh Hooda, DHBVN superintending engineer.
