Noida: Despite temperatures dropping to around 39 degrees Celsius, excessive humidity — ranging between 85% and 93% in Noida and Ghaziabad — coupled with intermittent showers, has triggered frequent tripping and prolonged power outages across both cities. On Monday, outages lasted from 30 minutes to more than three hours in several areas. In some areas, residents claimed that the power cuts happened on Sunday night.Discom officials said moisture and high humidity are major causes of power cuts. When moisture infiltrates cables or condenses inside electrical enclosures, it causes the insulation to break down. It creates leakage currents and short circuits that trip circuit breakers or damage equipment. These result in local faults or transformer snags, leading to power cuts. The electricity cannot be restored until the moisture dries up.Such faults occurred in sectors 19, 56, 63 and 105 in Noida on Monday. Residents from Indirapuram, Vasundhara, Vaishali, Shalimar Garden and Loni in Ghaziabad also complained about the power cuts. Vaishali resident Sanjay Sharma said abrupt power cuts are now a “daily affair”. He said there is a lack of communication from the electricity depSuch faults occurred in sectors 19, 56, 63 and 105 in Noida on Monday. Residents from Indirapuram, Vasundhara, Vaishali, Shalimar Garden and Loni in Ghaziabad also complained about the power cuts. Vaishali resident Sanjay Sharma said abrupt power cuts are now a “daily affair”. He said there is a lack of communication from the electricity department. Moreover, frequent power cuts coupled with low voltage are damaging appliances, he added.Earlier, a five-hour power cut was reported from Raj Nagar extension on Saturday and frequent tripping occurred on Sunday. Over 80 electricity feeders across the trans-Hindon area have been reported as overloaded, leading to local faults and unscheduled cuts, discom officials said. This is directly affecting areas like Shalimar Garden, Bhati Chowk and Ganeshpuri.The situation was no different in Noida. In Sector 19, residents claim that power cuts last for two to three hours daily. RWA president RC Gupta wrote to the chief engineer of the Noida power department on the matter. “Our sector has been facing outages since the beginning of summer. We recently faced an 11-hour outage on Thursday but the situation hasn’t improved. Over the weekend there were power cuts daily,” he said.The general secretary of the RWA, Laxmi Narain, said the biggest problem was the poor and ageing power infrastructure. Moreover, the electricity department is unable to pinpoint the cause of these power cuts. “Their reasons vary from faults on the supply lines, sudden faults in transformers, shutdowns at substations, birds colliding with power supply lines, falling of trees, splicing of Cables so on and so forth,” Narain said.Power department officials from both cities said teams on the ground are attending to the complaints raised and have been engaged all night to restore supply. But the increase in moisture is leading to repeated faults.
