Five-hour power cuts as DHBVN shut feeders after Sunday’s storm

Many areas of the city witnessed power outages for three to five hours following a heavy dust storm on Sunday evening.

The storm, which started around 8pm and lasted for about 30 minutes, also uprooted at least 15 trees across the district.

Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam (DHBVN), the power distribution company, shut down all its feeders around 7.50pm to prevent casualties and accidents, officials said.

Sectors 14, 15, 21, 22, 23, 31, 40, 45, Mayfield Garden, Ashok Vihar, Laxman Vihar, Sushant Lok, Wazirabad, Farukhnagar, South City and other areas faced up to five hours of power cuts on Sunday night.

Areas such as Palam Vihar, New Palam Vihar and DLF 3 had no electricity for several hours due to some technical faults and scheduled shut down.

Bhim Singh Yadav, a resident of Sector 22, said, “Storm lasted for 25 minutes, but electricity supply was disturbed for five hours. We called up the electricity department repeatedly to restore power supply. Electricity went off around 7.45pm and came around 12.15am. There was low voltage with fluctuations whole night even after the electricity supply was restored.”

In Sushant Lok-1, the residents started calling up DHBVN officials after storm was over for restoration of electricity supply. “Electricity supply returned around 11.45pm. There was no need of such a long shut down,” said Vishnu Khanna of Sushant Lok 1.

Areas such as Palam Vihar, New Palam Vihar and DLF 3 had to reel under power cuts for almost the whole night, residents said. Sunil Yadav, president of Palam Vihar RWA, said,

“A technical fault occurred around 11pm in one of the feeders of Palam Vihar, disrupting power supply for the whole night in half of the colony. Next day (Monday) the Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam again had a five-hour shutdown to repair the fault.”

DHBVN officials said no major damages were reported after the dust storm.

KC Aggarwal, superintending engineer, Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam, said, “We have as many as 1,000 feeders that were shut down between 7.50pm and 11.30pm for safety purposes before storm started. Our men were alert inspecting the entire district. However, no major damages were reported. Some cases of fallen trees were reported from some areas of Gurugram such as Farukhnagar, Manesar, Sohna and Sector 15.”