The city with ‘Princess Necklace’ suffers power outage

There will be rotational loadshedding happening in Mumbai for a week. “We are carrying out cuts in phases and area-wise to minimise inconvenience”, said MSEDCL official. A BEST official said the city of princess necklace faced no cut offs till Friday afternoon. “But due to shortfall of 250-300MW power in Mumbai, of which 100MW was for BEST consumers, we resorted to cuts from 4pm and this could continue on Saturday”, added the official. The cuts were faced in the suburb parts of Mumbai like Mahim, Wadala, Parel and then in South Mumbai. It was also carried in parts of Thane and Navi Mumbai. A few hospitals also suffered loadshedding but for some time.

Parts of the western suburbs, including Dahisar, Borivli, Kandivli, Andheri, and of the eastern suburbs, including Ghatkopar, Chembur, Tilak Nagar, Vikhroli, Powai-Kanjurmarg, Bhandup and Mulund, were also hit.

It’s the summer time and Mumbaikars are at the peak of heat which made them shocked to face the cut offs. According to TOI, a Dadar resident said, “We faced cuts from 1.30am to 4am and couldn’t sleep”.Where as a Ghatkopar citizen asked in his comments that “How can you live without a fan or AC in this weather?”

Comparatively the situation in Navi Mumbai was disastrous. Also,Thane, with areas like Kopri, Vitawa, Kalva, Airoli, Rabale, Vashi, Ghansoli and Koparkhairne were unfavourable. In Navi Mumbai, the cuts were through out the day.

A source from Mahatransco, the state power transmission company, said, “While two transformers were hit, the third was functional in Kalwa. But peak load in the afternoon led to a burst in it. We had teams to rectify the fault within an hour.” “If there is no peak demand, power can be supplied to most. But demand is high in summer,” an official said, requesting citizens to switch off fans, lights and ACs when not in use to reduce load.

A Tata spokesperson said, “Tata Power has picked up full load on all its Trombay and Hydro units and resorted to rotational 30-60 minutes loadshedding which will cause some inconvenience to customers in Salsette, Kolshet, Saki, Vikhroli, Dharavi, Borivli and Powai. Tata Power’s embedded generation in Mumbai is not only being maintained full but increased compared to other days at this juncture to minimise consumer inconvenience.” A Reliance Energy spokesperson said: “We were forced to do rotational load-shedding in Bandra, Santacruz, Andheri, Chembur, Ghatkopar, Tilak Nagar and Vikhroli. After normalcy in supply from grid, we restored supply at 5.15pm.”

Picture credits: Yatra Blog