LUCKNOW: June 6 was one of the hottest days of this summer and power supply in Eldeco II locality was disrupted a dozen times that day. Around 10.30pm, half of the residential colony went into darkness, as only one phase of power supply was operational, following a glitch caused by overheating in the main power panel of Kalandi Vihar powerhouse of Vrindavan Yojana.
Several calls were made to Lucknow Electricity Supply Administration (Lesa), including to its control room, engineers and officials and even on the toll-free number of discom MVVNL. However, no one responded.
Finally, around 3.30am, power supply was restored after a junior engineer received the call of a local resident who alerted him about the power crisis.
In Marutipuram of Indiranagar, residents are having a tough time with continuous low-voltage problems and power supply fluctuation. For weeks, they have not received a concrete solution.
Frequent power cuts in Old City, including Thakurganj, Napier Road Colony and Newazganj are common. There are 15 to 20 disruptions in a single night. During the day, the cuts are of longer duration. The sweltering heat has made it terrible for residents to bear with power cuts. On an average, there are 551 power outages in a day in the city.
The 33/11 Mohanlalganj (Old) sub-station recorded the highest number of outages, 742, in a 22-day duration from May 21 to June 11. The average duration of a cut was 10 hours.
In the past three weeks, Lesa has recorded 12,046 power outage cases including 6,782 in Cis-Gomti with an average 314 outages in a day. In Trans-Gomti, there were 5,264 outages with an average 237 cuts in a day.
A senior engineer of Lesa said, "Long hours of power cut in rural areas are caused largely by fragile tree branches. Besides, the Mohanlalganj sub-station has 13 feeders, 40-50km apart instead of being 2-3km apart. When there are power disruptions, it takes hours for the ground team to spot the fault."
Secondly, he said, for the past two years, Lesa has not upgraded its infrastructure, affecting power supply in the city, he said.
Lesa trans-Gomti chief executive engineer Anil Kumar Tiwari said, "It is correct that upgrade of infrastructure such as overhead cables, transformers and feeders is not optimum because of shortage of funds. We are finding solutions with whatever funds are available."
He attributed the other major cause of disruption to unprecedented heat.
"We witnessed a surge in power demand in April at 1534 MW instead of the usual 798 MW. Such a surge is usually seen in June. More people are using air conditioners, leading to overload. Lesa, MVVNL and UPPCL all working closely to solve the problem," he added.
