Kill the lights to join PM Narendra Modi call, keep appliances on

TNN | Updated: Apr 5, 2020, 06:08 IST

Police stand around graffiti on coronavirus in front of Town Hall, Bengaluru, on Saturday

BENGALURU: Switch off the lights for nine minutes on Sunday night to join Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call of solidarity, but keep your home appliances and electrical equipment running. That was the state energy department’s advice to citizens on Saturday amid concerns that a sudden drop in power demand, even if brief, might unsettle the power grid.
In a video message to the nation earlier this week, Modi urged everyone to show support for personnel engaged in the Covid-19 battle by turning off lights for nine minutes starting 9pm on Sunday and lighting lamps. The act is also intended to serve as a collective morale booster in the times of lockdown.
“The per day power requirement in Karnataka is between 8,000MW and 13,000MW and the average load clocked during evenings is around 7,000MW. If everyone were to switch off lights at the same time, we expect the load to drop by around 800MW. The sudden drop might affect the grid, and it is in this backdrop that we suggest that other sources of power consumption, including streetlights, be kept on,” said a senior official in the energy department. “Do not switch off the mains on Sunday night; only switch off the lights while keeping electrical equipment, including refrigerators and air conditioners, running.”
The state gets 49 million units of power from hydel sources every day, 42 million units from thermal units, 65 million units from the central government, 65 million units from non-conventional sources and 24 million units from other sources. Nearly 60 per cent of power generated in the night is from thermal plants. To ensure that there are no disruptions in the grid during the nine-minute switch-off, the state government has advised the thermal plants to keep power production at 50 per cent as it will be timeconsuming to scale up production immediately if the demand increases, according to some officials.
They rejected reports about a possible grid collapse on Sunday night. “We will manage it in such a way that nothing goes wrong,” one official said.
Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh have either expressed apprehensions about the impact of the voluntary turn-off on the grid or issued a list of dos and don’ts. Karnataka has not sent out any official communication on the issue to electricity supply companies, or escoms.