Outages in Mumbai as power demand at all-time high

MUMBAI: The peak electricity demand in the city touched an all-time high of 3,968 megawatts on Wednesday afternoon, which was followed by power cuts in a few parts of the island city, including Sion, and an outage in some areas along the Vile Parle-Andheri-Goregaon belt where supply disruption lasted nearly two hours in late afternoon. Parts of the eastern suburbs, including Vikhroli and Powai, faced outages in the evening.

The last recorded peak power demand in the city was 3,893MW in April.
Sources said in the island city and eastern suburbs, power supply was disrupted due to tripping of substations. An Adani Electricity Mumbai Ltd spokesperson said, "Due to tripping at 220KV Aarey transmission substation customers experienced power interruption in parts of Andheri, Malad, Goregaon, Ghatkopar and Powai. However, we ensured there was no interruption to critical establishments and restored supply to most within 30-45 minutes." Residents from Goregaon, however, complained that the helplines were not reachable during the crisis.

Thousands of Mumbaikars sweated it out even as the IMD Colaba observatory recorded a maximum of 34.4 degrees Celsius and IMD Santacruz 35.3 degrees Celsius.
As demand surges in Mumbai, power firms in SOS mode
Commercial and industrial consumers were also hit by the power outages in the island city and suburbs on Wednesday.
The peak power demand in the city rose gradually from 3,909MW to 3,968MW between 3pm and 4pm, sources said. In BEST supply areas, the normal peak demand during summer is 820-850MW, which shot up to 906MW on Wednesday.
The Adani Electricity official said: "Our peak demand exceeded 2,082MW on Wednesday due to rising temperature, which is the highest till date. It is expected to go up further...We are well equipped with the required network infrastructure and power contracts to meet the rising demand."
A Tata Power official said: "Since Monday, the demand for electricity has been steadily increasing, which is a yearly occurrence in summers due to the rise in humidity and temperatures in and around the city. Our team is closely monitoring the demand scenario in Mumbai which reached an all-time high of 3968MW on Wednesday at 3.30pm of which the Trombay plant supplied 750 MW." The peak demand in Tata Power supply area was 960MW on Wednesday.
"Across Maharashtra, the peak demand was between 28,000MW and 29,000MW, which was a huge burden on the state power utility firm," a power expert said, adding that in April, the highest peak demand in the state had touched 29,000MW, which was a first. All power firms are now in SOS mode. They have bought power under PPAs to cater to the rising demand.