HYDERABAD: Do you live in the West Zone of the city? Then you are more likely to face power cuts, that too during the weekends! Living in the IT corridor appears to have become both a boon and a bane for residents. Cyberabad residents on Twitter alleged that the electricity department disconnected power supply only during the weekends.
“Power cut since 11 am. This has been the case for a while now, in the weekends. When will you repair it?” tweeted Rakesh Senapathi, a user. Another user complained, “An entire day without power in Gachibowli. This should worry you,” said Naresh Reddy in a tweet.
Admitting that power cuts are frequent during the weekends, officials at TSSPCDL said that they prefer to schedule maintenance work at that time of the week. “We schedule maintenance work on weekends when the major IT companies are not working, because if power supply is cut off on weekdays, then it would lead to more loss. However, when done on weekends, we get multiple complaints from the residents, making maintenance more difficult. Now we are planning to keep a new schedule,” said Ramesh Medi, assitant engineer for Gachibowli. This regular maintenance work schedule may continue in the coming months, as officials admit there is a lot of work to do. Blame the rapid and unplanned urbanisation with high electricity demand, the department is now dealing with a situation where there are over 15 substations of 11 KV feeder, when the maximum handling capacity of an area is 10 KV.
Each of these feeders need their own maintenance and the department has completed the maintenance work on only 3. Moreover, officials inform that while voltage and lack of power supply are not the main issues, it is the scattered load demand across an area which is making things worse. “We have to separate the areas which need more electricity from the areas that don’t. Presently, it’s a little disorganised,” added Ramesh.
Another reason cited by electricity officials is the constant development work going on in Cyberabad, which forces the department to constantly shift cables for road work or for laying the drainage. It was only last week that residential pockets of Gachibowli like Telecom Nagar, APHB etc faced a 12-hour long power cut due to an 11 KV cable bursting.