Frequent power trippings in Patna make heat unbearable

PATNA: The oppressive summer, characterized by high temperature and humidity at present, is making life all the more difficult for city residents as power trippings are very frequent. Although the city is not witnessing any long power outages, frequent trippings reported from most city localities are making bearing with the heat tough for residents.

“It’s worst when it happens during night hours,” said Ashiana Nagar resident Manju Dubey. Mahim Sinha, a resident of Pirmohani, said, “Power supply in my area gets disrupted every day for at least one hour in morning and keeps playing truant in evening hours.”

“Life has become difficult for us due to frequent trippings and low voltage. It happens every few hours or sometimes several times even within an hour. In this situation, we cannot even carry out our routine work such as washing clothes or using mixies. Most of the time it is not possible to run AC or fridge due to voltage fluctuation,” said Poonam Singh, a resident of Mahesh Nagar.

“We are unable to run our AC and air cooler due to low voltage and frequent power tripping,” said Sushmita Sen, a resident of Bankipur.

The high temperature and humidity have made the peak power demand in the city shoot up to around 500MW. Last week, after a light rain and dust storm, the city’s total demand during peak hour was around 400MW. “Our total allocation at present is around 550MW for Patna,” said South Bihar Power Distribution Company Limited (SBPDCL)’s GM Dilip Kumar Singh.

The sudden rise in temperature sometimes hits the distribution system hard as it is not fully designed for such high heat. “But we now know the loopholes of the system and a lot of replacement and maintenance work is going on in the city so that the system can function efficiently in high temperature,” said SBPDCL sources.

“In fact, most of the old transformers have been replaced by new ones and, therefore, even enhanced load is not a major issue,” said SBPDCL GM Singh. Sometimes, snags in distribution infrastructure affects supply. But the distribution system is up to the mark and there is no complaint of any snag, said SBPDCL officials.

Courtesy: TNN