Load shedding back to haunt districts due to poor monsoon

Unable to meet the electricity demand, power managers had to resort to load shedding for five to six hours in the districts for the past three days. A senior Tangedco official said that load shedding would be temporary as the power demand is expected to come down once the peak monsoon sets in.

“Usually, the state gets good amount of rainfall from the north east monsoon during this period of the year thereby bringing down the power demand. However, this year rainfall is poor so far.”

“Besides, a few units of thermal power sta­tions are under outages, leading to shortfall in generation which has led to load shedding,” the official said. The official pointed out that in the first week of this month, power de­mand in the state was around 10,000 MW and has now crossed 11,500 MW due to poor rainfall.

One 600 MW unit of the Mettur plant, a 500 MW unit of Vallur plant and PPN, a private gas turbine station with a capacity of 330 MW were down due to technical snags.

“The Mettur station will start generation ag­ain from November 20 while Vallur and PPN sta­tions are expected to be back in a day or two. Pro­duction from these stations will bring down po­wer cuts,” the official pointed out.