CHENNAI: Residents of Tiruninravur, Pattabiram and parts of Avadi in Tiruvallur faced a sleepless night on April 19, as a major power outage lasting over five hours disrupted electricity supply across several neighbourhoods, including Nemilicheri, Avadi’s Melpakkam, Annai Indira Nagar and Ramapuram.

Frustrated residents took to social media to voice their grievances. Arunkumar, a resident of Nemilicheri, posted, “No electricity for over two hours… how can children sleep, very poor maintenance since years.” Another user, Vikram from Tiruninravur, stated, “No power for last three hours in Thiruninravur 602024… It’s very tough to sleep in summer without fans.”

Sowmya Narender, a resident of Melpakkam, wrote that her locality has been facing at least three-hour power cuts every night. “Today also, we’re facing power cut for more than three hours,” she posted on X (formerly Twitter).

TN Power Distribution Corporation Ltd (TNPDCL) issued a series of updates on X, attributing the outage to multiple technical faults on the feeder lines. “At 11:12 pm on April 19, the 110 KV Alamathy-Tiruninravur feeder tripped due to a fault and failed to resume normal operation. A backfeed was temporarily arranged from Pattabiram via the Avadi feeder, but this too tripped around 2 am on April 20.”

Upon inspection, a jumper cut was found at Ramapuram village near EVP Town by TNPDCL officials. The repair teams worked through the early hours to resolve the issue.

Power supply was finally restored at 5:01 am after the damaged jumper was replaced. TNPDCL confirmed that all 110 KV feeders were fully operational by 5:05 am.