Power outages add to summer woes in Uttar Pradesh

Lucknow, May 6 (IANS) Unscheduled power cuts across Uttar Pradesh have added to the summer woes of people even as the maximum temperature crosses 40 degrees celsius and the harsh sun shows no sign of relenting.

Officials admit that the power demand has peaked to 13,000 MW while the availability is 12,000 MW. The Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Private Limited (UPPCL) has purchased 100 MW of electricity from other sources but that is not enough to tide over the shoratges of 1,000 MW.

Power production has come to a grinding halt in a 100-MW unit of Parischa plant. Also there is no power generation in the 500-MW Anpara D.

Roastering-free cities like Lucknow and Agra have also reported long outages in the past 48-hours. With day temperatures steadily climbing, officials say that the power demand has gone up by 25 per cent.

The power demand in the state last week was 10,500 MW, which has now gone up to 13,000 MW. The 665 MW Harduaganj plant is generating only 250 MW after a recent boiler explosion. The Panki power plant in Kanpur is also not working to its optimum due to a technical fault.

The state gets 5,500 MW from the Centre and generates 6,500 MW from various sources.

Opposition parties have criticised the state government for the poor power supply. BJP’s state spokesman Vijay Bahadur Pathak said the Akhilesh Yadav government has been making loud claims of improvement in the power scenario though the ground relalities are very different.

"It is strange, the summer has just started and the situation is so bad. Only God knows what will happen when the heat wave escalates," he told IANS.

Senior BSP leader Swamy Prasad Maurya called the Samajwadi Party (SP) government as an "utter failure on all fronts, including the power sector."