HYDERABAD: It was a terrible Sankranti for residents of many areas in Greater Hyderabad as they had to undergo severe power cuts for hours. Supply was cut in some places for more than four hours on Thursday. The situation was slightly better on Friday.

Officials, meanwhile, denied unofficial power cuts and said that power had gone in several places due to heavy kite flying. “We had not imposed official power cuts. The threads of kites fall on the power line, leading to tripping. It is somewhat time-consuming to remove the threads and restore supply,” said Satish Kumar, chief engineer, Metro Zone. Officials have made it clear that the power demand in summer would be higher than anticipated.

“Due to severe atmospheric changes, the summer will be hotter. If that is the case, the consumption will be more. So people in the city should be ready for four-hour power cuts, which will be imposed from mid-February. In the rest of Telangana, it could be six hours or even more,” a senior official of SPCDCL said.

The present demand in Telangana is 128 MU per day and the supply is 125 MU. By February 15, the 3 MU shortage would go up to 15 MU and by March 1, it may touch 22 MU. During peak summer, a shortage of 30 MU is expected, which means that people will have a tough March, April and May. Though officials have calculated that the situation will improve after May 20 with the onset of the monsoon, it will go downhill if the rains don’t come on time.

Discoms have already indicated to Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao that it would be impossible to supply power even for six hours to the farmers, which is currently being done.

The government has pinned its hopes mainly on 800 MW of power from the Dabhol plant. Even if Dabhol power is available in the next six to seven weeks, there will not be total relief since another 20 MU per day will be required by then, an official of the Energy Department pointed out.

Users suffer due to staff crunch:

Power consumers in the city have been paying a heavy price due to non-expansion of sections or enhancement of capacity of power supply feeders in tune with the growing number connections.

According to official figures, there has been a 10 per cent growth in the number of consumers, but the number of power supply stations as well as the staff has remained the same in the last few years. As a result, there have been constant breakdowns, which could not be rectified for hours together.

Hyderabad city and Ranga Reddy district are divided into six circles and each circle is divided into divisions, sub-divisions and sections. The city has three operational divisions, North, Central and South, with most of the old city falling in the Central division, which faces the most problems.

There are 90 sections in these three divisions which supply power to 14,05,850 domestic consumers and 3,08,389 commercial users. There are also industrial users, streetlights etc. which take the total number of consumers to 17,44,625.

A section should not have more than 16,000 consumers. But in almost all the sections, the figure is much higher. “There has been no recruitment of assistant engineers for the past three years. We are facing shortage of linemen. Senior engineers are required to maintain the six new 132/33 KV subs-stations that will come up at Balkampet, Erragadda, Fever Hospital and Osmania University. We can’t find space to set up these substations,” said Satish Kumar, chief of Metro zone.