Gurgaon: Ban or no ban, uninterrupted
power supply seems to be a distant dream for the city. Residents of several housing societies are still reeling from at least three hours of outages daily despite the Environment Pollution (Prevention & Control) Authority (EPCA) asking the power discom to ensure continuous electricity supply in the wake of the ban on diesel gensets.
Residents of highrises such as Ramprastha Edge, Atrium, View and Vista met administrative officials on Tuesday and expressed concern regarding the daily power cuts, especially when work from home and online classes had become a part of every household. Officials, however, claimed they had surplus power.
EPCA has directed Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam (DHBVN) to prepare a list of housing societies, along with signatures of residents, which need an exemption from the ban on DG sets and submit an affidavit. Officials said they would submit the affidavit soon.
Until the affidavit is submitted, the ban on diesel generators will continue as usual and residents will have to bear the brunt. In Gurgaon, there are 22 condominiums that are dependent on DG sets for power — three of them entirely.
“Around 1,000 families live here in Ramprastha. Till now, the builder has failed to get a permanent connection from DHBVN. The electricity supply is erratic and most of the time, the supply source is the generator. As most people are working from home because of the pandemic, it is getting increasingly difficult to live without power. We are facing outages on a daily basis,” said Pradeep Rahi, the RWA president of Atrium.
Atanu Bhattacharya, who is the joint secretary of the Edge RWA, said, “We have appealed to the district administration and DHBVN to look into the power situation in our society. The Ramprastha developer has stopped the use of gensets. They are used only for lifts and water supply. But children have online classes and we are working from home. The UPS doesn’t help beyond a few minutes and no one has inverters as gensets are there in the society.”
The situation is hardly different in other societies such as NBCC Heights and Raheja Navodaya.
DHBVN officials, however, claimed they had surplus power — 12,500MW against the base peak demand of 11,000MW. “Earlier, we had issued notices to builders of projects that do not have electricity connection and given them a time-frame to establish a substation for their residents. Ramprastha Society has a 500KW load and NBCC has an independent feeder. Elaborate arrangements are being done to ensure uninterrupted power supply in New Gurgaon,” said Manoj Yadav, superintending engineer of circle 1 of DHBVN.