The electricity department says the blackouts are caused by local snags, and work on infrastructure upgrade was hampered due to the lockdown
NOIDA/GHAZIABAD: June has been humid and power cuts that have returned with annoying frequency in Noida and Ghaziabad this month have made working from home an even bigger challenge because of frequent disruptions in the AC and the Wi-Fi.
For the past 10 days, in Ghaziabad, certain pockets of trans-Hindon areas have witnessed two hours of power cuts on an average. On June 1 and June 5, Indirapuram witnessed 6 hours and 5 hours of power cuts, respectively.
The electricity department says the blackouts are caused by local snags, and work on infrastructure upgrade was hampered due to the lockdown. But overall, it says, power supply has improved in trans-Hindon. “We have improved the average power situation in trans-Hindon areas as compared to last year by 18 minutes,” said superintendent engineer of Pashchimanchal Vidyut Vitaran Nigam Limited (PVVNL) GD Dwivedi. “As far outages are concerned, they are stray incidents largely attributed to bad weather,” he added.
DK Pandey, a local resident, said the recent trend of outages did not seem to suggest an improvement. “We are no experts, but in the last 10 days, we have experienced long powercuts, which is contrary to the power department’s claim,” he said.
Dwivedi said the snags, which had happened in Indirapuram, had been fixed. “The 400kVA substation in Kala Patthar has improved power situation in trans-Hindon areas but there were few local faults at eight substations in Indirapuram, which has caused sporadic outages. But the faults have been rectified. Transformer augmentation work at 27 places was carried out this year apart from installation of ring main unit appliance, which gives us liberty to switch over form one feeder to another.”
Noida has been facing outages more frequently, and for longer, since May. While a storm on June 10 led to a daylong outage across sectors in Noida and Greater Noida, older sectors saw outages daily. Problems like rusting transformers and poles, loose overhead hanging cables and voltage fluctuations are also yet to be fixed.
Even newer highrises on Noida Expressway had to face long power cuts this Monday due to overload of internal transformers. “The power cuts in newer sectors and apartment complexes is due to lack of infrastructure,” said NP Singh, president District Development Residents Welfare Association (DDRW), which represents RWAs across GB Nagar district.
PVVNL MD Arvind Bangari Mallappa had in January sanctioned Rs 26 crore for sprucing up infrastructure. “Where is all the upgrade work? We face daily fluctuations in power. The problem has been pending since last year,” said SK Jain, resident of sector 92. Similar complaints were reported from sectors 44, 19, 20, 30, 31, 28, 122, 51 and 12. “We need a justification of the routine financial load imposed on us by way of tariff hike by discoms, while they are unable to address supply issues,” said Laxmi Narain, who represents the Sector 19 RWA.
Chief zonal engineer VN Singh said during the lockdown, work on laying of cables underground as well as an upgrade in power infrastructure got disrupted due to lack of labourers. “We were midway through the work when the lockdown happened. Now, post unlock, the contractors have been told to resume work and deliver at the earliest. Work has picked up pace,” said Singh.
Source: TNN
