September 10, 2012
India

Trichy residents reel under power cuts

R Gokul, TNN | The Times of India | timesofindia.indiatimes.com 10 September 2012

TRICHY: Unscheduled power cuts between midnight and early morning have been giving sleepless nights to people in Trichy for the past one week. With reports that the power situation would further worsen by the end of September due to the stoppage of windmill power generation, residents are bracing themselves for tough days ahead.

With the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board (TNEB) not being able to provide uninterrupted power supply during the night time, people residing in rural parts of the districts have been suffering in silence, while those in the city limits are affected whenever the windmill power generation touches a low. As the power generation has been inconsistent in the past one week, all of them have been experiencing a power cut for more than six hours a day, including a three hour cut between midnight and early morning.

“We could not get a good night’s sleep after a hard day of work, due to the power cut at night. Even our children are suffering a lot and inadequate sleep also results in poor performance at school,” laments a resident A Selvam of KK Nagar. Even though many residents have inverters, they are no longer useful as there is not enough power supply to charge the batteries.

With sufficient power supply (average 1250 mw for Trichy region) by means of windmill power generation, the power situation was a marginally better since May 2012. Hence, many restrictions including compulsory power holidays announced by the government for small industries were also lifted as the power generations from Sengottai pass, Aralvoimozhi pass, Coimbatore pass and Palghat pass were consistent. However, the situation was back to square one in the last week of July as the wind power generation declined. At present, the condition had deteriorated further as the other modes of power generation in the state are yet to commence.

M Sekaran of the consumer grievance redressal forum, Trichy said, “All the people in the state should shoulder the problem of the power crisis. People in Chennai have power cuts for only one hour per day, while people in other parts of the state suffer a great deal. This should be changed.”

“Power generation through windmills has been inconsistent of late. It touches 3000 MW sometimes and plunges to 300 MW in a few hours in a single day. Trichy region consisting of eight districts has a demand of 1500 MW. Moreover, the small industries function in the night time. Hence, the power interruption at night is unavoidable at this juncture,” said P Anna Durai, chief engineer of TNEB, Trichy region.

TNEB sources said that the early commissioning of some pending power generation projects like the fourth unit in Mettur, NTPC and TNEB plants in North Chennai and the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KKNPP) would solve the problem. Otherwise, the people would have to face a greater inconvenience from the end of September or mid-October when the windmill power generation would further come down, they added.