Power cuts duration reduced to around 2 to 4 hours in Punjab

Patiala, Jul 12 (UNI) The Punjab State Electricity Board has decided to reduce the duration of power cuts to around two to four hours following the substantial decline in the demand in the wake of rains.

Disclosing this here today, PSEB Chairman Y S Ratra said the PSEB had earlier imposed six hours power cuts daily uniformly both in urban and rural areas due to increase in demand and low availability of power.

He said Unit No. 6 and Unit No. 3 of Singrouli Power Plant (500 MW) of NTPC and Unit No. 2 of Rihand (500MW) were out of order, affecting generation.

BBMB is releasing 3500 cusecs of water from Pong Dam and only one machine of 60MW is operational, resulting is generation of only 16 lakh units per day against 48 lakh units per day last year.

He said the PSEB would lose 24 lakh units when the Naptha Jhakhri Plant (1500 MW) in Himachal Pradesh remained closed from 0600 hrs to 1800 hrs on July 13 for flushing out the silt.

Tanakpur Hydel Project of NHPC and Narora Atomic Power Plant of NPCIL have been shut down due to technical faults causing shortage of 7.25 lakh units per day to PSEB.

States of Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, facing acute power shortage, have backed out of the earlier commitment of supplying energy through banking to Punjab from July 15 next onwards.

Due to overall power shortage the frequency of the National Grid has gone down, therefore PSEB is unable to overdraw from national grid as per requirement.

Mr Ratra said there had been abrupt rise in the demand of power to 1709 lakh units yesterday against availability of 1478 lakh units.

He informed that PSEB officials were trying to rectify faults in the system wherever they occur.

UNI XC VKJ AE RAI2110