Snag has city residents sweat for three hours

Kuldip Bhatia

Ludhiana, July 11

A technical snag in 220-kV Ferozepur Road sub-station on Wednesday forenoon disrupted power supply in localities across the city for almost three hours causing huge inconvenience to the residents in the hot and humid weather conditions. In most of the affected areas, people had to go without water supply as well due to power failure.

According to information, the power supply was shut down around 11.30 when feeders supplying power to Civil Lines, DC Complex, localities along Feozepur Road, PAU Complex, Bhai Randhir Singh Nagar, Sarabha Nagar, Model Town, Dugri and Pakhowal Road went non-operational due to a technical fault in the 220-kV Ferozepur Road sub-station. In some other areas, however, residents complained that the power supply was not available since 10 am.

“The power utility is not able to maintain supply when demand is at its peak due to extremely hot weather and paddy sowing. What is the benefit of the state being power surplus if the distribution network cannot cope with the spurt in the load which is a routine during this particular season,” wondered Ravneet Singh, a shopkeeper in Civil Lines.

A senior official of Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL) admitted that even after laying new feeders, 11 kV and 66 kV sub-stations, erecting new LT and HT lines, the distribution network more or less remained overloaded.

“The cash-strapped PSPCL simply does not have the financial resources to make huge capital investment required for a total revamp of the distribution system in the mega city, and the people would have to make do with what is made available to them,” said the official. He, however, added that to some extent people were also responsible for overloaded system because they were in the habit of not getting their sanctioned load enhanced even when the connected load exceeded many times of the sanctioned load.

That the disruption in power supply for one or the other reason had become a routine affair in the city even though the PSPCL claimed of not imposing any power cut on any category of consumers, was evident from the fact that the power supply was disrupted for several hours in many city localities on Tuesday as well due to overloading at 220 kV Lalton Kalan sub-station. Even otherwise, consumers in mixed land use area with presence of hundreds of small and tiny industrial units, complain that power failure for an hour or two, even at odd hours, has become a routine.