Coal news and updates

As the heat wave continued to sweep across the city, taking the temperature to a maximum of 43 degrees Celsius, the power demand in the city suddenly jumped up to 71 MW within a week and touched an all-time high at 397 MW on May 20. The earlier record for the highest demand for power in the city was recorded on July 11 2014, when it touched 395 MW. 

The sudden increase of 71 MW in the demand for power in the past one week has left residents high and dry in the scorching heat with the outage affecting almost every sector. While the Electricity Department is buying power from the open market to meet the increased demand, the overloading and overheating has caused the breakdown of supply for hours. The residents in different parts of the city have to sweat it out in the scorching heat because of the frequent power cuts. 

While the outage is occurring all over the city, the residents of the southern sectors and housing societies are complaining of long-duration power cuts. 

Many parts of Sectors 32, 37, 38, 43, 44, 44, 19, 18, 21, 22, 23, 15, 16 and 24 and some parts of the Industrial Area faced intermittent power cuts throughout the day today. 

An official of the Electricity Department said the breakdown was caused due to overloading in various sectors. He said the department was working on a war footing to restore the supply but a sudden increase in the complaints made their work difficult. On many occasions, the supply of power in some sectors had to be stopped to repair a fault. 

 

MP Singh, Superintending Engineer, Electricity Department, said though the demand was rising, they were able to procure electricity to meet the deficit. 

He appealed to the people to disclose the extra load voluntarily so that planning could be done in advance to meet the rise in demand. Besides, the residents should also use LED and five-star equipment to save energy. 

Source: Tribune India