Power-starved Gurgaon residents wait for a miracle

GURGAON - The Haryana government says power cuts in this satellite city of the capital will be a thing of the past in a year’s time. But residents, who have experienced such broken promises before, are more worried about how they will cope with 12-hour power cuts now that have worsened because the state government is reluctant to buy electricity from outside.

Residents of Sushant Lok, DLF, Sector 56 and South City are complaining that the power cuts are not only long but are also unscheduled.

An official of Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam (DHBVN) said: “Haryana used to buy power from Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir but this winter they decided against it.”

“The decision was taken at the government level so we can’t comment on this,” the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IANS. “We used to buy power for summers and winters but this winter the government didn’t buy.”

“We are wondering what will happen in summer when we witnessed 12 hours of power cuts in winter,” Taskeen Agha, a Sector 56 resident, told IANS. “The situation is going to get worse. The control room set up by DHBVN has no information on power cuts and they simply say that they are not aware of any power shortage.”

According to DHBVN officials, they had a problem in January because the transmission lines got wet due to heavy fog and kept tripping. On top of that, five units of a thermal plant in Panipat had broken down.

Gurgaon’s daily power demand is 10 million units, but DHBVN is able to supply only 4-5 million.

“Due to the continuing power cuts, cost of living in Gurgaon is getting higher. We have to pay extra for the generators used by apartments,” Shradha, a resident of South City, said.

The Haryana government has launched the state’s first gas insulated grid substation (GIS) of 66 KV in Sector 43. The government is also executing an ambitious Rs.1,000-crore power transmission network plan, which is scheduled to be completed next year.

“The government had planned to add 27 new substations with total transformation capacity of 1,600 MVa, out of which 10 — two of 220 KVa level and eight of 66 KVa/33 KVa levels — have already been commissioned,” Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda said here.

Once the network is ready, it should be able to distribute 2,292.5 MVa, far higher than the projected demand of 1,994 MVa.

DHBVN is putting up 49 new feeders of 11 KV level at a cost of Rs.20 crore to segregate domestic and agricultural loads. It plans to add 720 new distribution transformers to the present network of 9,056. The network of distribution lines will be increased by 315 km by the end of next financial year, officials said.