CHENNAI:The city has recorded a seven per cent decrease in the number of complaints regarding power supply during summer, compared to last year. Officials believe that this is a result of the strengthening work carried out by Tangedco in the overall power supply network in both north and south Chennai in the past two years.
Number of calls made to the official helpline of the Electricity Board 1912, were recorded to be 3,35,825 from April 2016 to March 17 and have reduced to 3,14,579 when compared to 2017-18. Officials said that the addition of multiple low-tension (LT) and high-tension (HT) lines and erection of additional substations, transformers and pillar boxes are the reasons behind this decrease.
“From 2008 to 2016, Tangedco wasn’t able to provide network maintenance that was needed to be on a par with supply demand. Hence, this was a period of severe power cuts. Feeder lines would trip often due to overloads and lack of maintenance of substations. But since 2016 till now, this has been improved, to a large extent,” said the official.
With the addition of over 150 LT cables with a capacity of 11 Kilo Volt (KV) in north Chennai, the worst hit areas of Perambur, Vyasarpadi, Pulianthope and Tondiarpet no longer faced long durations of frequent power cut. Similarly, around 140 LT cables were added in south Chennai over a period of two years which brought relief to areas along the IT Corridor, parts of Tambaram, Iyyapanthangal, Chinmaya Nagar and Adyar.
“We have had many power fluctuations due to low voltage in our area three years ago. There used to be frequent power cuts too. But in the past two years, overhead cables were brought underground in many localities in Perambur. They have also installed many pillar boxes in arterial streets,” said Krishnan, a resident of Periyar Nagar near Perambur.
Residents have also observed that the duration of power cut has gone down from a couple of hours to 15 minutes in these areas. “In 2013, most parts of Tambaram had frequent power cuts which lasted for six to seven hours every day. But now, there are rarely such outages,” said M Gabriel, a resident of Tambaram.