Power snapped in several areas of the city as trees got uprooted and branches fell on cables due to a dust storm, even as the government announced that discoms will be penalised and consumers compensated for unscheduled outages starting as early as this week.
Delhi government has also written to the Centre over the damage to a 400KVA tower managed by Power Grid in the Bamnauli area yesterday. Alternative arrangements have been made to bypass the shortfall, Delhi Power Minister Satyender Jain said.
The statement on imposition of penalties came at a press briefing by Jain. A power department official said several parts of Delhi saw blackouts on account of uprooting of trees their branches falling on transmission lines.
"DERC (Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission) have been given policy directions to penalise the companies for unscheduled power cuts and it will be implemented this week. Consultations on the draft notification issued last year are over," Jain said.
Jain attributed the unscheduled outages to "local faults" and singled out BSES for the situation. The discoms did not invest in improving infrastructure since the privatisation of Delhi's power sector fifteen years ago, he said.
"There's a tower in Bagnoli of 400KVA capacity built and managed by powergrid. It fell yesterday. We have written to the Centre to probe the incident," Jain said.
Giving details on Sunday's power situation, Jain said peak power demand was 5,634 MW, relatively low for it being a Sunday. TPDDL received 752 complaints, while BYPL and BRPL received 2,938 and 3,195 complaints respectively, he said.
Among them, 1,022 complaints were resolved within one hour while 1,541 took two hours. There's no shortage of power and no scheduled power cuts, he said.
"The discoms have not built inadequate infrastructure. They say we have put up cables but whenever there is overload those cables snap as they are of inferior quality. We have directed the companies to arrange mobile transformers," Jain said.
Delhi's power demand hit an all-time peak of 6,188 MW on May 20, which officials said may rise further during the month of July when usage of air conditioners will increase as more humidity will make coolers virtually ineffective.
