Residents suffer due to power cut in Bhubaneswar. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, June 12: Unscheduled power cuts have added to the woes of the residents in the city, who are already battling extremely hot and humid conditions.

Even the Assembly was not spared with electricity being disrupted for around 10 minutes during the first session of the 15th Assembly.

Though Central Electricity Supply Utility (Cesu), the power distribution company, upgraded around 30 sub-stations before March to ensure uninterrupted power supply during summer, areas such as Saheed Nagar, Mancheswar, Rasulgarh and VSS Nagar have been witnessing unscheduled power cuts over the past few days. Bhubaneswar today recorded a maximum temperature of 41.6°C.

Cesu officials said increase in load had led to the power disruptions.

“While the city’s average power requirement is 220MW a day, this goes up to 270MW during summer. However, humid conditions have led to the demand touching 315MW during the last few days,” said superintending engineer of Cesu Sukanta Kumar Swain. He said that the demand had increased due to extensive use of air-conditioners.

“It has become impossible to stay at home without fans and air-conditioners. But frequent unscheduled power cuts have made our lives difficult. We need to bathe twice or more a day to cool down,” said Sourabh Sahu, a resident of VSS Nagar.

The city depends on the Chandaka grid for its power requirement. Though the autotransformer installed at the grid has a capacity of 460 million volt-amperes (MVA), it can take maximum load of around 430 MVA. While Bhubaneswar’s load is 315 MVA, the load of Puri and Nimapara is 80 MVA and 60 MVA, respectively. Consequently, when there is an increase in load, auto transformers trip causing power disruption. Cesu officials said that the power requirement of the city increases from 10am to 4pm and 7pm to 11pm.

“The state government has asked all power distribution companies to ensure uninterrupted power supply during summer. But frequent power cuts have made the situation unbearable,” said Devi Prasad Jena, a resident of Rasulgarh.

Odisha Power Transmission Corporation Ltd officials said that an autotransformer of a bigger capacity would be installed for the Chandaka grid soon.