City faces double whammy of sweltering heat, power cuts

Several residents in Tiruvanmiyur, Thoraipakkam, Palavakkam, Perungudi, Medavakkam, Selaiyur, Ayanavaram, Kolathur and Purasaiwalkam took to social media to complain about unscheduled power cuts ranging from half an hour to an hour during the night for the past few days.

“#Powercut in Selaiyur for two hours now. This is the second time this week they are disconnecting the supply at the same time (12.30 am). Tried calling all the possible numbers I have in TNEB and no response#tneb @Pthangamanioffl TNEB has no customer service or Twitter handle,” complained Hariprasad (@hariprasadns).

A resident from Moovarasampet at Madipakkam wrote on Twitter that the supply was disrupted for more than an hour during the peak summer. “Please fix this, old people are struggling to sleep. You should understand the need for a continuous power supply in a metro city. Area-Moovarasampet, Madipakkam,” he said. Another resident of Purasaiwalkam lamented that three days in the past 10 days, his locality faced night time power cuts between 1.30 am to 3.30 am.

Karthikeyan tweeted sarcastically that whoever is coming to power after the election should give free inverter to every house considering the frequent power cuts during the night time.

A senior Tangedco official attributed the power cuts to increased power demand owing to air conditioner usage, which leads to straining of the distribution network, including transformers faults.

“The power cuts have nothing to do with demand and supply. We have more than an adequate generation to meet the requirement. For the last 10 days, peak power demand has been crossing 16,000 MW consistently and it touched an all-time high of 16,561 MW on April 1 at 10 am,” the official said, adding that such power cuts happen due to inadequate distribution infrastructures, including distribution transformers not keeping in pace with the development of localities