New Delhi: With emergency restoration work underway, the power supply in the national capital would normalise in two weeks, Power Minister Piyush Goyal said Tuesday as outages continued amid severe heat wave conditions.
Goyal held an emergency meeting with Delhi Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung and top officials to discuss the steps to be taken to tackle the power crisis.
Addressing media persons after the meeting, Goyal said “inadequate” transmission lines meant Delhi could absorb 400 MW of power on top of its existing 5,300 MW, falling short of current peak demand of 5,800 MW.
“Clearly the power grid as it stands today is outdated, needs augmentation and modernisation and may repeatedly have outages and tripping problems,” he said.
Goyal also blamed the previous Congress government for the current crisis. “Policy paralysis and poor execution by previous government is responsible for power crisis in the capital.”
However, the minister assured that the problem will be resolved in 15 days. “It normally takes three months to restore lines after the damage we saw. We’ll work 24×7 and get them up in two weeks.”
But, he added, the internal deadline for officials is 10 days.
The capital’s power supply was disrupted following a severe storm last month which caused many lines of the Northern Grid to trip.
Goyal said the storm and the soaring summer temperatures had an effect on power distribution. “Emergency restoration is underway,” he added.
“Power companies have already taken steps to restore these lines within two weeks latest,” the minister said.
With no respite from the heat, power outages in parts of the capital last for several hours and also affect water supply in many localities.
Goyal also said that a gas-fired power generation plant at Bawana in West Delhi has a capacity of producing 1,500 MW of electricity, but was producing only 290 MW.
He said extra gas will be provided to the Bawana plant from NTPC for production of 400 MW of power that Delhi needs.
Goyal said the government was trying to find a long-term solution so that these problems do not crop up in the capital next summer.
He also assured chief ministers of other states that adequate electricity will be provided in times of need as the National Grid is having adequate power.