Delhi: Kejriwal wants daily reports on power cuts

As several parts of national capital witnessing power cuts in sweltering heat, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday ordered authorities to submit a report to him on outages every day and also increase the capacity of discoms’ call centres for satisfactory disposal of people’s complaints.

In his direction to the chief secretary, Keriwal said power distribution companies should send messages to consumers in affected areas if they resort to unscheduled power cuts.

Addressing a press conference, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said the chief secretary will ensure that discoms list the scheduled power cuts on their websites so that people can know about it in advance.

He said that it is the responsibility of all three discoms - Tata Power Delhi Distribution Limited (TPDDL), BSES Rajdhani and BSES Yamuna - to provide power to Delhiites 24x7.

With the mercury rising in the last two days, several areas in the city have been facing outages, Sisodia said.

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Today, the power demand soared to 6,526 megawatts at 3.31 pm, the highest ever in the capital.

He said the chief minister held a meeting with Chief Secretary M M Kutty and power department officials today and issued a nuber of directions to tackle the situation.

“The chief minister has directed that the capacity of discoms call centres be increased for handling public complaints. The CM has said that power department should record, transcribe and analyse each complaint call for public satisfaction.

“He has sought a daily report on outages at 11 AM,” the deputy chief minister also said.

Sisodia said Delhi does not have shortage of power but has surplus.

“The government is fully prepared to meet even 8,000 MW demand. In some areas, transformers had tripped because of excessive heat and high demand, that is why outages occurred in the last two days,” Sisodia added.

He said that the chief minister also directed that hoardings be put up across the city with complaint numbers of all three discoms.

on Monday, the peak power demand shot up to 6,361 MW at 3:06 pm.

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The peak power demand in the capital this year breached the 6,000 MW mark in May. It was 6,021 MW on May 17, the second highest this year.

The power discoms have expected the peak demand this year to be around 6,600 MW.

The peak demand of Delhi, even at the 6,000 MW level, is three-fold of Kolkata (2,100 MW) and about 60 per cent more than that of Mumbai(4,900 MW).