Hundreds of people taking to the streets to vent frustration over frequent and long power cuts, particularly at night, was not common even in the peak summer months in previous years. Yet, it has become the order of the day in Sept this year.Hardly any neighbourhood is spared from unscheduled power cuts and fluctuations since July. Residents of Washermenpet and Royapuram were the latest to join the series of protests. On Thursday night, they thronged the local section offices and quarrelled with officers. The problem lies in both generation and distribution. Making matters worse, the grievance redressal mechanism has collapsed, meaning consumers are suffering on all three crucial aspects.Generation fumblesThe extended summer has caught the Tamil Nadu Power Distribution Corporation (TNPDCL) off guard. The unprecedented surge in power demand, limited generation from the state’s own plants, and indecisiveness over alternative arrangements have led to the sorry state of affairs in the state. While releasing the white paper on the energy department in July, electricity and law minister R Nirmalkumar said the previous DMK govt bought ‘high-cost’ power through short-term agreements.Two months later, TNPDCL has again opted for short-term agreements and purchases from exchanges, as no new long or medium-term agreements have been signed.S Neelakanta Pillai, a retired TNEB engineer, said the state-owned thermal plants were generating power well below their installed capacity. “The 800MW supercritical thermal plant NCTPS Stage III has been producing power to the extent of 46%, whereas both the 600MW units of Stage II are also generating power at 42% and 46%,” he said.TN power generation corporation officials said some plants could not achieve their full potential as they were due for annual maintenance. “They still generate power to tide over the crisis. The maintenance is necessary to ensure their availability next summer,” said the official.Distribution glitchesThe constant excuse given for power cuts in Chennai and suburban neighbourhoods is failure of the distribution network, including damage to underground cables and tripping of feeders.Poor coordination of NPDCL officials with contractors of other agencies such as MAWS and GCC, despite multiple interagency meetings, also led to outages in several pockets of the city. TNPDCL recently lodged a police complaint against Torrent Gas for damaging an underground cable, which left Avadi and Pattabiram residents in darkness. The electricity minister on Friday said the officers had been directed to lodge police complaints against agencies that cause damage to TNPDCL properties.Complaint mechanism defunctMinnagam, the centralised call centre set up to receive electricity-related complaints from across the state via the dedicated phone number 94987-94987, is the principal channel through which consumers report electricity complaints. But it often falls dead, making it impossible for consumers to report grievances.Minnagam is equipped to take at least 60 calls at a time and forward the complaints to the section concerned for quick redressal.The recently revived ‘Fuse Off Call’ system for each assistant engineer’s office also failed to bridge the gap, as all numbers had to be replaced after a dispute with the telecom provider. The consumers are now left in the dark about the new numbers.“TNPDCL has not publicised the new numbers. It should have sent an SMS to all consumers about the change. At least, rerouting calls to the new numbers would have helped consumers,” said Satish Galley of Semmanchery. T Sadagopan of Pattabiram, a consumer activist, said, “TNPDCL’s WhatsApp chatbot is still at a nascent stage and does not respond well.”However, minister Nirmalkumar said the power crisis in Tamil Nadu is well under control compared to states such as Punjab, where outages last up to 14 hours. “For consumer grievance redressal, we are developing an advanced AI tool, and it will be launched in two months,” he said.
