Soaring mercury pushes up power demand in Jammu, officials appeal for judicial use of AC

The rising mercury in Jammu region has led to an increased power demand forcing unscheduled outages and overloading on transformers, with officials on Sunday appealing to people to judiciously use electrical appliances like air conditioners.

The residents in Jammu are reeling under hot and humid conditions over the past couple of weeks with the city recording a high of 34.3 degrees Celsius and a low of 25.6 degrees Celsius on Sunday, which were 1.3 and 2.3 notches above the normal, respectively, during this time of the season.

The power demand of Jammu region, specially in plains, has increased significantly because of excessive use of cooling appliances like air conditioners, refrigerators and air coolers and use of pump sets by farmers due to shortfall of rains during the current monsoon season and hot and humid weather in the last fortnight, a spokesperson of the Power Development Department (PDD) said.

As per forecast, the weather is likely to improve within 24 hours and the power demand is likely to be normalised, following which the forced curtailment shall be withdrawn, the spokesperson said.

The excessive load has caused overloading of the transformers, which has compelled the department to resort to force unscheduled curtailments, he said.

The department has also appealed to farmers to use water pumps for irrigation during night hours only when power demand of the region decreases.

The spokesperson said distribution transformer damage rate has increased as compared to previous month due to the overloading. However, the damaged transformers in the Jammu city area are being replaced within 24 hours and within two days in rural areas.

s per the Load Dispatch Centre data, the Power Development Department is supplying about10 per cent more energy as compared to previous year, the spokesperson said.