Power Consumption Peaking in Delhi Due to Heat

The city is battling the scorching sun with residents staying indoors and switching on the air-conditioners. It is just mid-April, but power consumption in the Capital has already crossed the 4,300 MW mark.

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Outages have already started in residential areas with many people saying they were not informed about the power cuts. If the heat and power demand keep surging at this rate, experts say that peak demand may cross 6,000 MW by June or July. The highest power demand Delhi has met was 5,925 MW on July 15, 2014.

With this, the Capital became one of the largest consumers of electricity, surpassing the demand of all North-East States put together, besides Mumbai, Kolkata, Bihar and Odisha.

“The highest power demand this season was 4,343 MW at 3:20 p.m. on Saturday, which at 42 degrees Celsius has been the hottest day of this year so far. On Sunday, the demand was 4,170 MW,” said a power official.

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Some areas, in fact, saw power cuts that stretched for over four hours. “Last year, people were informed at least a day before a scheduled outage. We ourselves could track the same on websites of the State load despatch centre and discoms. But now, we can only see the outages that have already happened,” said Vivek Khanna, a resident of Mayapuri, which saw a power outage of two hours due to a “breakdown” in the area’s distribution network.

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Areas that saw power cuts over the weekend include Shiv Vihar, Tagore Garden, Ambedkar Nagar, Janakpuri, Panchsheel Park and Madhu Vihar, among others. Shiv Vihar faced the longest power of four hours. While discoms maintained that there was no power cut due to shortage of electricity, they said that on many occasions outages occur due to repair work or breakdowns due to excessive load.

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The city, meanwhile, is likely to get some respite with a dust storm and thunderstorm in the forecast for Monday - see the forecasts @ www.indiaairquality.info