CHENNAI: Amid sweltering summer conditions, the city’s peak power demand touched a new high of 4,809 MW at 10 pm on Wednesday, surpassing the previous record of 4,769 MW registered on May 31, 2024, even as several residents across the city complained of recurring night-time power outages.
Addressing concerns raised by the public on social media over frequent disruptions and the alleged lack of prompt response from the State Electricity Board, Minister R Nirmalkumar said, “The outages are largely caused by accidental damage to underground power cables during civil and contract works, apart from technical faults and infrastructure constraints in the power sector.”
The Minister added that the department had been continuously monitoring the situation since morning and had already initiated corrective measures.
“More than 160 incidents involving damage to underground power cables have been recorded over the past one year during excavation works carried out for infrastructure and other contract projects,” he added. “Such incidents are one of the major reasons for the disruptions reported in several localities. Transformer-related technical faults are also contributing to outages in certain areas.”
From Thursday onwards, the Minister assured that the department had begun strengthening its public response mechanism through call centres and social media platforms to provide timely updates on the cause of outages and the estimated time for restoration of power supply.