Mercury Rising, Electricity Cuts Back
With peak summer months here, electricity cuts are all set to disturb the city of Punjab.
Several zones of Punjab are seeing electricity cuts, and the Punjab State Power Corporation Ltd is stressed to handle the sharp augmentation in demand for power because of the mounting mercury.
While two days back, the state had surrendered electricity from the central allocation owing to meager demand, however on Thursday, Punjab failed to satisfy almost 46 lakh units of power, leading to imposition of electricity cuts.
The utmost demand on Thursday stood at 6,646 mega watt at 8 pm, whilst it was 5,557 mega watt during the same time of 2012.
“The sharp increase in demand by 1,100 MW was unexpected. We have to come up with an effective plan to deal with the situation,” added a PSPCL representative.
Normally, the business bore the first brunt with the Punjab State Power Corporation Ltd imposing 3-4 peak load constraints on industrial customers.
All the key cities, townships and rustic regions confronted electricity cuts. Whilst the major cities had to go without electricity for 40 minutes, electricity cuts in other region headquarters remained up to 3 hours. The state was much shoddier in rustic regions that had to put up with 5 hour electricity cuts.
“We are staring at a crisis. The situation will turn grim in the next couple of days as no power plant will be operational in Punjab. The demand is likely to be 12% more than last year. And we didn’t add a single unit. So again we will have to purchase power from other states. We are relying heavily on good monsoon showers this time. A poor monsoon will result in long power cuts,” stated a Punjab State Power Corporation Ltd official.
The unhindered demand on Thursday remained at 1,393 lakh units. In spite of buying 114 lakh units of electricity from outside, the Punjab State Power Corporation Ltd could manage just 1,350 lakh units, forcing it to impose cuts, he said.
While the position of Punjab State Power Corporation Ltd director (distribution) is lying unfilled, Punjab State Power Corporation Ltd chairman-cum-managing director KD Chaudhary could not be reached for remarks as he was busy in a gathering with the CM at Chandigarh.
