Delhi reels under prolonged power cuts in scorching heat

New Delhi: Delhi`s hottest day of the season turned even worse for residents as several areas across the city on Thursday suffered prolonged power cuts of upto six hours due to technical glitches in the transmission network. Residents in various areas of West Delhi were the worst affected as a 220 KV transmission line of Delhi Transco Ltd (DTL) in Pappankalan area tripped in the afternoon. The tripping of the line resulted outages in almost all areas in West Delhi.

"The line between Pappankalan and Bamnauli will be restored late in the evening or by tomorrow morning. The DTL engineers are working on war footing to restore it. The repair work has been affected due to heavy flow of traffic in the area," said a power department official. The DTL is a Delhi government entity which maintains all major transmission networks in the city. "There has been no power in our area for last six hours. We have made complaints to the authorities but there has been no response so far," said a resident of Dwarka area. Areas in east, south and north Delhi also faced long power cuts due to technical problems and local faults in distribution network. The searing heat today pushed the power demand in the city to 5,055 MW, the highest of the year. Yesterday, the power demand was recorded at 4,955 MW. The mercury today touched the 45.7 degree Celsius mark, the highest for the month of May in a decade. Today`s maximum temperature was also the highest of the season. The Delhi government had yesterday pulled up various private power distribution companies asking them to improve supply urgently. The Power department had said the city has more power than the current demand and blamed the long outages on local faults and other technical problems in the distribution network. PTI