The duration of power outage in Chennai is two hours only on paper, but in reality, it is up to three hours in several areas.
And most of the additional power outage happens ‘unscheduled’ late night in “tail-end” areas like Madipakkam, Nanganallur, Thillai Ganga Nagar and Adambakkam.
People there spend sleepless nights owing to sporadic late night power outage that sometimes lasts up to 30 minutes. Worse, residents have been suffering power outage at least four times every night during the last fortnight.
“Power supply gets disrupted at least five times every night. Sometimes the supply resumes within 15 minutes and sometimes it may take even after 45 minutes,” complained Mr Hariharan, a retired bank staff of Nanganallur.
“We will put up with it if the power supply gets affected once or twice due to technical snag. But, we face power outage up to five times between 11 pm and 4 pm, when people are in deep slumber,” rued homemaker Mrs Pallavi Kannadasan adding that the children often wake up regularly during late hours owing to the power outage.
“It has been a fortnight since I had adequate sleep. It reflects badly the next day when I am at work. These days, I struggle to sit in front of the computer for even two hours continuously,” complained software engineer Mr Xavier questioning.
When asked, TNEB officials preferring anonymity attributed the frequent and unscheduled late night power outage to either load shedding or line fault. However, the residents are unwilling to buy the EB theory.
“How could load shedding and line fault happen daily in select areas?” Mr Xavier wondered adding that authorities could as well increase the scheduled power outage by another half hour during day-time instead of severing supply late night daily.