City records lowest power cuts in 3 years
2016 2017 2018 April May June
*Till June 19 The coal supply has been replenished. Last month there were days when there was only one day’s coal available in reserve with power plants. SATYENDAR JAIN, power minister
NEW DELHI: Delhi power minister Satyendar Jain on Friday said that the city this year had recorded its lowest average outages in the months of April, May and June (till 19th) when compared to the same months in the last three years.
“The average load shedding figure this year is 0.08%, which is lowest not only in Delhi but also in India. Only on June 11 and 12 it was a bit high at 0.13% and 0.11% respectively. Other states have bigger percentages of load shedding. Less load shedding is a result of better management and elaborate arrangements to tackle electricity demands,” he said.
He added that till four-five years ago, power outages in summer months used to be three to four times the current figure.
Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal had on Thursday reviewed the power situation in the city and had sought a daily report on the status of power in the city.
Earlier on June 8 this year, the city’s power demand spike to 6,934 MW, the highest so far this season. He said that south Delhi and West Delhi were areas from where the peak demands during day and night was recorded respectively.
The minister maintained that there was “no scarcity” of power in the city but added that Delhi at present has four to five days coal in stock to run its thermal power plants.
“The coal supply has been replenished. Last month there were days when there was only one day’s coal available in reserve with the power plants. Ideally there should be at least 15 days of coal available with the power plants,” he said.
He also said that around 20 monitoring teams have been asked to visit all areas of the city to ensure that summer action plan was being implemented properly and people of the city did not suffer due to power cuts.
Jain said that in order to check power outages, the government had made elaborate arrangements like changing of transformers, power cables, replacement of old tools with the new ones at power stations.
“We have fixed 600 new transformers in different localities of the city in last one year. We will add 150 more transformers by the end of this year to ensure better power supply,” the minister said.
The minister also said that the scheme regarding power subsidy for tenants would be implemented in next two to three months.