Summer relentless, so are power cuts as Noida sweats

NOIDA: Already facing a scorching summer, residents were dealt with a double whammy of prolonged outages and voltage fluctuations on Wednesday. Parts of the city have reported frequent power cuts this month with people blaming outdated infrastructure and cable snags.
Shiv Shakti Apartment in Sector 71 saw a 10-hour-long power cut, while intermittent outages and voltage fluctuations were reported at Sector 105 on Tuesday and Wednesday.Complaints of intermittent to long outages and voltage fluctuations were reported from sectors 55, 56, 72, 11, 12.
The temperature in Noida hovered around 44 degrees Celsius this afternoon.
RWA representatives of sectors 117 and 44 met power department officials on Wednesday seeking redress for internal sector lines. "For the last few weeks, we have been facing multiple power failures during the night. Power was supplied in phases today, due to which, four of our lifts remained non-functional. We are still assessing the damage to our equipment. The power went off three times in 10 minutes without any warning. This is unacceptable," said Navneet Chandra, a resident of Krishna Apra Residency in Sector 61.
Sanjay Shukla, RWA general secretary of Shiv Shakti Apartment said, "Residents are suffering everyday with merely 10 hours of supply a day and that too with intermittent cuts. Officials are requested to pay attention to this as the heat is unbearable, especially for children and the elderly."
SDO Deepak Kumar and engineer Mahipal Singh said that the problems will be addressed.
Sector 44 RWA president Sudhir Sood held a similar meeting with the area's SDO Kuldeep Tomar, JE Anuj Verma among others. "We have been facing unannounced power cuts for several months. Our feeder for the underground cable was loaded with supply for Chalera and Salarpur villages which often led to overloading and outages. This was separated about a month back. However, an upgrade of our sector's dilapidated substation is on the cards as all equipment like transformers, feeders, panels, etc need to be replaced. During monsoon, the substation would be flooded with seepage from the roof," said Sood.
Tomar said the substation would be upgraded in the coming months.
Meanwhile, in Ghaziabad, a series of 4 to 5 hours long power cuts continue in rural and urban parts of the city amid scorching heat. In some places, transformers caught fire, while in others local faults resulted in outages. Mansarovar, Raj Compound, Deep Vihar reported outages from 11am to 2am, while there were powercuts in Vijaynagar for 4 to 5 hours. Similar instances were reported in Nandgram, Meerut Road, Patel Nagar, Lohia Nagar. A four-hour shutdown was reported in Shastri Nagar for the installation of a new protection system and three new VCBs. Executive engineer Amar Singh said that the power supply was disrupted in Mahindra Enclave, Shastri Nagar and Rajpur area due to the installation work.
Meanwhile, the state's peak power demand touched 29,820 MW on Tuesday night, the highest ever to be recorded. Electricity consumption also surged to approximately 643 million units. On May 31, the electricity demand had reached 29,727 MW. The state has set a national record for meeting the increased demand during the severe heatwave.