Power situation across state to get better in 10 days, says Haryana minister

Gurugram witnessed fewer power outages on Monday as compared to most days last week, officials said, adding residents in a few areas had to deal with outages due to localised issues such as voltage fluctuation.

PK Chauhan, superintendent engineer of Gurugram circle 2 of DHBVN, said that the overall situation had improved from last week. “There was hardly any power cut on Monday due to supply shortage. Issues like voltage fluctuation are local faults which we rectify as and when we receive complaints,” he said.

Officials said that electricity demand in Gurugram district touched 1,500 megawatts (MW) on Monday, while all areas under the jurisdiction of Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam (DHBVN) demanded a load of 5,200MW the same day. Meanwhile, areas under the jurisdiction of Uttar Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigamdemanded a load of 2,500MW on Monday.

Haryana power minister Ranjit Singh on Monday said that the power situation in the state is expected to improve within 10 days as more energy will be available soon. Following negotiations, the Haryana government will sign a supplementary power purchase agreement with Adani Power Ltd to supply about 1,050MW of power per day generated from domestic coal at the agreed tariff of ₹2.94 per unit. Singh said that even amid the current crisis, 30% more power was supplied across the state on Saturday and Sunday in comparison to what was supplied on the same day last year.

However, Gurugram residents were still inconvenienced. Dhruv Bansal, administrator and spokesperson of DLF QERWA, the core association for phase 1 to phase 5, ruled that power outages were taking place mainly during the time when water needed to be pumped into overhead tanks.

“These faults may be localised but authorities need to look into this,” Bansal said.

Susheel Kumar, a resident of Sector 28, said there was a power cut in the area for around 45 minutes on Monday.

Rajni Yadav, a homemaker who lives in Sector 28, said voltage in most homes in the area fluctuated multiple times on Monday. “This rarely took place in the past,” she said.

To be sure, officials said that on Monday, there was only 20 minutes of enforced power outage in urban Gurugram between midnight and 7.30pm, while all other sectors continued to receive uninterrupted power supply.

According to officials, there was one-and-half hours of power outage in rural areas and four hours of power outage in industrial areas while the urban and agricultural sectors didn’t suffer a power outage even for a minute on Sunday.

On Saturday, there was a power outage in urban Gurugram for about four hours, as per officials. The rural area had suffered a power outage of around five hours, the industrial sector faced an outage for four hours and the agricultural sector suffered an outage of around seven-and-a-half hours on the day.