Sweltering summer: Outages give sleepless nights to Mohali residents

PSPCL BLAMES OVERLOADING; RESIDENTS DECRY ILL-PREPAREDNESS DESPITE STUDENTS ATTENDING ONLINE CLASSES AND PEOPLE WORKING FROM HOME

MOHALI: Amid state government’s claims of seamless power supply, residents across Mohali are reeling under unscheduled power cuts for the past one week.

Complaints of outages without any prior information have been pouring in from various sectors, phases, Balongi, Nayagaon, Kansal and Zirakpur, with cuts of up to two hours leaving Sectors 76 to 80 the worst-affected.

According to the Punjab State Power Corporation (PSPCL), surplus power is available for the district, so there are no scheduled outages. The downtime, however, was being caused by the power grids tripping due to overload and occasional cable failure in storms.

PS Virdi, member, Punjab State Electricity Regulatory Commission said the power body had failed to upgrade the infrastructure ahead of time and now residents were at the receiving end in the hot and humid weather. “Sometimes, the department takes several hours to rectify faults. Consumers deserve better services, especially during peak summer,” he said.

Amit Khanna, resident of Sector 79, said even inverters failed during long power cuts. “This is especially troublesome now when students are attending online classes and people are working from home,” he said.

Residents also complained of poor response on complaints made to PSPCL. The corporation, in July last year, had outsourced the customer care to a UK-based firm, Teleperformance.

Ravinder Singh Saini, superintending engineer, PSPCL, claimed there were no unscheduled power cuts, as the supply was more than the demand. “Even when there is an overload or fault in cables, we sort it out immediately,” he said.

A senior PSPCL official said, “Mohali’s daily average demand is 420MW (megawatt) per day, while the supply is 560MW. Mohali has two main grids – one in Industrial Area, Phase 7, which generates 360MW, whereas the demand is 300MW, while the other gird in Sector 80 generates 200MW against the demand of 120MW.” The district has nearly 2 lakh power consumers in different categories, including 1.7 lakh domestic consumers.