Noida: Around 2am on Friday, the ceiling fans in Sector 120 began to slow down. ACs and coolers conked off, and reverse osmosis units started malfunctioning. With a night temperature at least two to three degrees above normal, residents were left helpless.The picture looked similar across various city sectors. A surge in power demand amid the heatwave has been causing overnight outages and voltage fluctuations across several of these sectors. Residents in Noida’s sectors 51, 53, 70, 71, 120 and 122, and Greater Noida’s Delta 2, Alpha 2, Beta and Gamma sectors experienced disruptions lasting past midnight.Equipment failures compounded the crisis: a transformer caught fire in Ghaziabad’s Rajendra Nagar Sector 2, while transformer overloads hit Noida’s sectors 117 and 79, and a cable fault struck Greater Noida’s Delta 2.“The public is suffering amidst the scorching heat. With the rapidly growing population in Noida and Greater Noida West, electricity demand is rising,” a resident of Sector 122, Umesh Sharma, said. Discom officials have estimated that by July or Aug, Noida’s power demand is expected to peak at 3,000 MW.Sharma said frequent power cuts, low voltage, transformer failures and a faulty cable infrastructure are hampering the quality of life. “People are unable to sleep through the night, children’s studies are getting disrupted and people are falling sick,” he said.On Thursday, the maximum temperature soared up to 44 degrees Celsius. There was no electricity between 1pm and 4pmin Sector 53. “The heat was so intense that it was difficult for us to breathe,” RWA president of the sector Anil Kumar Singh said. “We dialled the discom’s number so many times, but they remained indifferent to the situation.”In the Sector 74 condo, Supertech Capetown, power was cut off for over three hours from 9.45pm to 1am on Thursday. AOA president Arun Sharma said the internal electrical system of the condo had sensed a grid supply of only one phase. This led the auto power backup to begin operating. “So in one phase, the residents continued to operate their ACs, which led to overloading on one DG, which catered to 12 towers. That DG got overheated and burnt. We then quickly bifurcated the load of six towers to the other DG, while the remaining 6 towers’ supply came around 1.25am. when all three phases of supply resumed,” he said.In the meantime, one person got stuck in the lift of one of the affected towers.The superintending engineer of Noida’s power department, Vivek Kumar Patel, told TOI that the transformer on the 33 kV line at sectors 117 and 79 substations faced overloading due to increased demand. The summer heat also added to the problem. “We made attempts to fix it at night, but it could not be done. On Friday morning, we shifted the supply load to the alternate spare transformer. Now there will be no issues of outage in the affected areas,” he said.
Linemen at work on fault correction in Gyan Khand, Ghaziabad.
Meanwhile, in Greater Noida, similar issues plagued areas such as sectors Delta 2, Alpha 1 and 2, Gamma, etc., where residents reported outages lasting well past midnight. Many expressed frustrations over the lack of response from local power authorities. Bobby Bhati, president of Sector Delta 2 RWA, said, “Despite repeated requests for assistance, no resolution was achieved till past 2am on Friday. Calls to customer care and NPCL officials remain unanswered.”Sector Delta 1 resident Manish Singh also complained of a similar long outage lasting over two hours, while Saransh from Sector 3, Greater Noida West, wondered how long it would take for the power to be restored. “The electricity has been cut off for hours at a stretch – no fewer than 15 times since this morning,” said another resident from Sector Delta 1.An NPCL spokesperson acknowledged the issues, attributing them to equipment overload and a cable fault in Sector Delta 2, which were addressed past midnight. “There was an issue in a few pockets because of a cable fault, and the same was rectified by our team,” said the NPCL spokesperson.Residents in Ghaziabad too reeled through more than 20 power cuts only on Thursday, forcing many to consider alternative measures such as generators. In Makanpur, residents raised alarms over dangerously low voltage levels threatening their appliances, urging power officials to take immediate action.The situation escalated when a transformer caught fire in Sector 2, Rajendra Nagar, at 11.30 p.m. Complaints poured in from neighbourhoods including Abhay Khand, Vasundhara, Loni and Vaishali. While Kamal Pant from Gyan Khand 1 complained of no power from late Thursday night, Chirag Verma from Abhay Khand took to social media to highlight maintenance issues, short circuits and overall negligence from the electricity department.As the discom in Ghaziabad deployed teams to address local faults due to equipment heating, the residents remain sceptical, citing continued issues with power supply despite daily complaints.
