Sudden dust storm in the national capital uprooted trees and snapped power supply in many areas as branches fell on them, even as the Delhi government on Monday said that the power distribution compan
Sudden dust storm in the national capital uprooted trees and snapped power supply in many areas as branches fell on them, even as the Delhi government on Monday said that the power distribution companies will be penalised and consumers compensated for unscheduled outages starting as early as this week.
The Delhi government has also written to the Centre over the damage to a 400KVA tower managed by Power Grid in Bamnauli on Sunday. Alternate arrangements have been made to bypass the shortfall, Delhi power minister Satyendar Jain said.
The statement on imposition of penalties was issued during a press briefing by Mr Jain. A power department official said several parts of Delhi experienced blackouts on account of uprooting of trees and their branches falling on transmission lines.
“The Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) has been given policy directions to penalise the companies for unscheduled power cuts and it will be implemented this week. Consultations on the draft notification issued last year are over,” Mr Jain said.
He attributed unscheduled outages to “local faults” and singled out Reliance BSES for the situation. The discoms did not invest in improving infrastructure since the privatisation of Delhi’s power sector 15 years ago, he said. “There’s a tower in Bagnoli of 400KVA capacity built and managed by Power Grid. It fell yesterday. We have written to the Centre to probe the incident,” Mr Jain said.
Giving details of Sunday’s power situation, Mr Jain said peak power demand was 5,634 MW, relatively low for it being a Sunday. TPDDL received 752 complaints, while BYPL and BRPL received 2,938 and 3,195 complaints respectively. Among them, 1,022 complaints were resolved within one hour while 1,541 took two hours. There was no shortage of power and no scheduled powercuts, he said.
