City power demand hits 6,188 MW

A day after breaching all the past records, the national capital’s peak electricity demand hit an all-time peak of 6,188 MW, crippling the power supply in large parts of South Delhi and compounding the woes of people already battling sweltering heat.

Due to rampant power outages across Delhi, city electricity minister Satyendar Jain on Friday held a meeting involving distribution companies, BSES and Tata Power, and directed them to immediately deploy additional teams to minimise the complaints of the electricity consumers.

Even Union power minister Piyush Goyal was not spared of the ordeal as the National Media Centre saw a blackout while he was addressing the media about the Centre’s initiatives to boost electricity supply in the country.

The State Load Despatch Centre recorded the maximum power load of 6,188 MW at 3.18 pm on Friday as against Thursday’s 6,044 MW.

Demand has increased by over 8 per cent in just 48 hours, city officials said.

Mr Jain directed the power department to seek three hourly status and daily reports from the three discoms about consumer complaints and their redressal. According to the discoms, Delhi’s power load was 5,027 MW in the third week of May in 2015 and 4,512 MW in 2014.

After power demand breached the 6,000 MW mark on Thursday, the city authorities had urged people to stop using non-important power guzzling appliances during peak hours.

South Delhi areas that faced outages include South Extension, Defence Colony, Nizamuddin, Vasant Vihar, East of Kailash and Jangpura due to issues with 400 KV Maharani Bagh and 220 KV Lodhi Road Circle transformers.

Delhi Transco’s 220 KV Ballabgarh BTPS circuit was overloaded and that impacted power supply in parts of South Delhi, including Okhla and adjoining areas, an official said.

A resident of Malviya Nagar complained that “the locality has been facing power cuts for the last three days. Every night around 12.30 pm, power goes and it comes at least three hours later.”

The discoms attributed the faults to extreme heat and round-the-clock power demand which they said are not giving sufficient time to the power networks to cool down.

Mr Jain inquired about the complaint handling mechanism of discoms and asked their representatives why a large number of consumers were facing difficulty in registering their complaints.