NOIDA/GHAZIABAD: These are dark days for Noida and
Ghaziabad. Since Monday, the two cities bordering Delhi have gone without
power for up to 10 hours a day, and things are unlikely to improve for another three days at least.
Used to outages caused by tripping transformers and local faults, residents of Noida and Ghaziabad are now faced with a more serious problem: four units of the Vishnu Prayag hydel power plant in Uttarakhand have crashed due to flooding in the Alaknanda river and two units at Sonbhadra — Anpara B and Anpara C — have collapsed due to a fault in the generator’s transformer.
This has led to a massive shortfall of 1,500 MW in Uttar Pradesh, leading to power rostering across the state, including Noida and Ghaziabad.
In the two NCR cities, against a peak demand of 1,200 MW, the supply is around 1,000 MW. Residents of Noida are going without power for up to six hours a day while Ghaziabad fares worse, with power cuts lasting up to 10 hours.
“Things will become normal only after three days as the machines need to be repaired, cooled and re-run, before they can resume,” said Arvind Rajvedi, superintending engineer of Paschimanchal Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd, an arm of the Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Ltd (UPPCL). “However, as Noida is on the VIP list, we expect minimum rostering.”
UPPCL managing director AP Mishra said the crisis was indeed widespread, but added it was temporary and may get resolved soon.
On Monday, Noida residents complained of two-hour-long power cuts in the middle of the sweltering night and again in the morning for another two hours. “We have not had electricity since Sunday due to a transformer problem and it was restored only at 5pm on Monday. Again, on Monday night, the power went around 10 pm,” said Upasna Puri, a resident of sector 36.
Besides the outages, severe fluctuations in the power supply played havoc with electrical appliances. “It becomes very difficult to operate computers and the inverter runs out after four hours. In summer it’s unbearable,” said an IT professional who lives in Sector 19.
Officials, however, said that apart from the six-hour power cuts divided into three two-hour outages, no other scheduled power cuts are taking place in Noida. “On Monday, the power supply was affected from 12.15pm to 2.15pm and from 3.15 to 5.15pm and again on Tuesday morning for another two hours between 6.15 and 8.15,” Rajvedi said.
In Ghaziabad, residents of Indirapuram, Vaishali, Kaushambi and Vasundhara complained of 8-10-hour power cuts. Residents of highrise apartments in the trans-Hindon areas have been left completely at the mercy of diesel-powered back-up systems that are maintained by housing societies.
“We have run up huge bills for the power back-up systems with most societies charging in excess of Rs 15 for every unit of power,” said Alok Kumar, president of the Federation of Associations of Apartment Owners of Ghaziabad.