NEW DELHI: Low voltage, breakdowns leave city fuming

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Monday 29 May 2000

Low voltage, breakdowns leave city fuming By A Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI: The power crisis in the city is increasing in direct proportion to the rise in temperature. Apart from the normal loadshedding, local power problems also have risen considerably, leaving the entire city sweating.

Not a single residential colony has been left untouched by the power crisis in the last couple of days. And power cuts have been ranging from a couple of hours to almost the entire day. In many areas, power cuts have also affected the supply of water.

With demand going up because of the intense heat, DVB had to resort to loadshedding right from 6 am on Thursday, though it was confined to theft prone areas. Later, DVB also resorted to its regular rotational loadshedding for one hour all over the city.

Residential areas like Defence Colony, Kailash Colony and Greater Kailash-I, Rajouri Garden, Daryaganj, Rampura DDA flats in Keshavpuram faced major power cuts in the last two to three days. On Thursday also, residents called up to complain about the frequent and erratic power cuts.

A DDA flats resident from Keshavpuram said though his area has been facing long power cuts, the Rampura village, opposite their flats has power almost throughout the day. ``The reason the village has power is because almost every house has an industry. On the contrary, we have power cuts for upto five hours, several times during the day,'' a resident said.

Residents of Munirka DDA flats in south Delhi had to go without both, water and power, because of irregular power. In the last three days, the residents had to face sleepless nights and take water from tankers.

Dwarka in west Delhi also had a similar problem, with residents protesting on the long duration of power cuts.

A Daryaganj resident said the Netaji Subhash Marg has faced severe power shortages in the last couple of days and the supply was erratic on Thursday also. It was a similar story for Kailash Colony and its neighbour Greater Kailash-I, which had long power cuts on Thursday.

DVB member technical YP Singh said voltage problems in the northern grid are causing problems, not only in Delhi but in many other states in the northern region. Singh said, ``The grid voltage drops due to which we have to induce loadshedding to save the system from collapsing. Though the loadshedding would have been around 150 to 200 MW, we are being forced to loadshed around 350 to 400 MW everyday in the afternoon.''

He added that local faults are taking place because of the increased load on the system. ``Air conditioning loads are creating problems as these are going to be extremely high in the afternoons, resulting in local faults and cable faults,'' Singh said. He added that Greater Kailash and Kailash Colony faced a major power problem on Wednesday because of a cable fault

http://www.timesofindia.com/290500/29mdel5.htm

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), May 29, 2000


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