Planned power cuts likely to go up in state

The duration of planned loadshedding in the state may increase soon unless central authorities take effective steps to curb heavy

overdrawal by northern states. The state has been facing unplanned power cuts since August 3. Beginning with 15 to 30 minutes of unplanned cut, the duration has now increased to two hours.

Even major urban centres like Pune and Nagpur have been facing two-hour unscheduled power cuts in the last few days.

The maximum demand-supply gap, which was around 1,600 MW in the third week of July reached 3,800 MW on August 17. Ajoy Mehta, managing director of state-run power distributor MSEDCL, admitted that unscheduled power cuts had become frequent in the last few days and stressed that unless the National Load Dispatch Centre (NLDC) and Regional Load Dispatch Centre (RLDCs) were able to curb overdrawal by northern states, MSEDCL would have think about increasing scheduled load-shedding in a day or two.

“We have lodged a complaint with NLDC and RLDCs regarding heavy overdrawal by northern states at low frequencies. We are fervently hoping that these agencies take stringent steps to curb blatant violation of grid discipline by these states. Otherwise we will have to think about increasing load shedding,” he said.