Rain hits city power supply on R-Day

GURGAON: Rain played havoc with power supply in Gurgaon yet again. Most parts of Kadipur subdivision were without power for several hours on Monday morning following a blast triggered by rain in the cable box of the Kadipur feeder line.
Areas around Pataudi road, Khandsa road, Kadipur, Shivaji Nagar, sectors 10, 10A, 9 and 34, among other areas, were without power since 6.30am for about five hours on Monday morning.
Though initially Haryana Vidyut Prasaran Nigam (HVPN) and Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam (DHBVN) authorities traded charges for the fault in the cable box, power could be restored only around 11.30am.
DHBVN officials initially claimed it was a fault at the 66kV substations in Sector 10 that led to the outage and later reported it as a fault in a cable box at Kadipur subdivision.
According to HVPN’s executive engineer, M L Garg, who confirmed that it was not a fault at the HVPN-managed substation at Sector 10, the rain had led to a blast around 6.30am in the cable box that connects the line from the substation to the Kadipur feeder.
DHBVN’s Kadipur SDO J C Bisla told TOI, “It took us time to figure out where the actual fault lay. Initially we thought it was at the substation and later figured out that it was because of a problem with the cable box, which had burst.”
Bisla said that it took the officials about three hours to restore the fault and get the line running. Officials at HVPN, however, said the fault stemmed from DHBVN’s lines and had nothing to do with HVPN.
Bisla however clarified, saying: “No one can be blamed here as this is a common problem that occurs because of rain or increase in moisture levels. The cable box is a junction where DHBVN’s feeder line is connected to HVPN’s VCB (vacuum circuit breaker), and no one can be blamed here for the cable box blast. We repaired the fault by about 11 and restored the line soon after,” Bisla said.
Despite the drop in the power demand during winter months, this is the second instance of an outage owing to fault in the power transmission system, the last being when residents of Sushant Lok were left in the dark for almost 12 hours owing to snags at the substation concerned on December 14.