Panchkula, July 24
Power supply in the entire North India has been adversely affected after power generation was partially stopped at the Nathpa Jakhri project in Himachal Pradesh, forced outage at Sangrauli in Uttar Pradesh and through the inter-regional link from Gujarat, following floods.
Normal life was thrown out of gear as the region sizzled because of long and unscheduled power cuts, heat and high humidity. Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi continued to reel under a power crisis and unscheduled power cuts on industry, urban and domestic consumers, including the ongoing power regulations, were imposed. With demand rising because of the paddy season, Punjab and Haryana resorted to unscheduled interchange of power from the Northern Grid. On an average, Haryana is overdrawing 40-50 lakh units of power from the grid by paying penal rates.
At several places in Punjab and Haryana, people came out on the streets to protest against the long unscheduled power cuts. Incidents of manhandling of Power Department employees by irate residents were also reported. Because of the ongoing crisis, power supply to agricultural consumers was also affected. Lt-Gen O.S. Lohchab, chairman of Haryana Power Utilities, today appealed to the masses not to take the law in their own hands. He said this was a temporary crisis and efforts were being made to buy additional power.
Today, there was a shortage of 1,750 MW of power in the Northern Grid because of these outage. Because of excessive silt, three units at the Nathpa Jakhri power project remained closed today. This led to a shortage of about 24 lakh units (LUs) in Haryana alone. With the inter-regional link of getting power from Gujarat, too, being closed following power generation being stopped after the floods there, an additional 20 LUs of shortage of power has took place in Haryana. The power generation at Sangrauli was restored today, but for the past week, this, too, added to the woes of Haryana, as the state lost 20 LUs of power. As against a total demand of 780 LUs, the power availability in the state is 740 LUs.
Haryana today decided to impose scheduled power cuts on industry and urban consumers after it lost about 60 lakh units (LUs) of power because of these sudden forced outage. These restrictions will be imposed from Tuesday, said senior officials in Haryana Power Utilities.
Punjab has already been imposing power regulatory measures, and following the outage at various generation stations, these are likely to continue, say officials in the Punjab State Electricity Board. As against a total demand of 1,340 LUs, the availability is 1,230 LUs. This shortage of 110 LUs is being met through power regulatory measures. Mr Param Hans Singh, Chief Engineer, Systems Operation, PSEB, said that they had made alternative arrangements of buying 36 LUs of liquid power through Anta Arya Dadri, an NTPC project, which will help tide over the crisis.
