Chennai: A night of power cuts kept residents of Maduravoyal, Alapakkam, parts of J J Nagar and Koyambedu awake after underground power cables burned out. Officials said multiple electricity feeders could not handle the extra demand.
“We thought power would be back in an hour when the lights went off around 9pm,” said Premkumar K, a resident of Ashta Lakshmi Nagar, Alapakkam. “Power was back after midnight, but at 3.30 am, supply was once again suspended. It was restored at 10am on Saturday,” he said.
J Guru from Maduravoyal said prolonged power cuts in summer causes discomfort especially for children and old people. M Karunakaran, a resident of Krishna Nagar, said they could not reach officials at the Minnagam call centre. “When there is a serious issue, TNPDCL must inform consumers about the fault. We had no alert from TNPDCL, and the Minnagam call centre was not reachable. Local personnel did not reply to calls,” he said.
TNPDCL officials said these interruptions were unexpected. “The Maduravoyal-Koyambedu power feeder and the Chinmaya Nagar-Maduravoyal feeder tripped on Friday night due to earthing of underground cables in two places. So, power supply to some areas was rerouted to the 33KV Karambakkam substation and Koyambedu market substation,” an official said. However, by 2.55am, the JJ Nagar feeder tripped as it was unable to withstand the additional load. “The Chinmaya Nagar feeder was fixed, but it tripped again around 3am,” he said.
At 8.50am, one of the cable faults was fixed, and the power supply was restored in a phased manner, they said.