While the rain brought huge respite for the residents of Chennai, the power cuts created huge issues.
The interruption in the power supply (after the rains began pouring in the early morning) has resulted in many places in Chennai city becoming dark yesterday. At noon only, power supply came back in many localities in Chennai. There were many complaints about the power cuts on social media also.
In places like Anna Nagar, Mandaveli, Nandanam, New Washermenpet, Porur, velachery, Madipakkam etc the power cuts were present for about 5 hours and created issues for the residents.
According to a resident, the holiday declared yesterday for the schools was superb otherwise it would have been very difficult for the parents etc. There were some issues regarding making complaints due to power cuts through the Minnagam call centre. This was mentioned by a resident belonging to Mylapore. For the majority of the day, the call centre numbers remained unreachable.
Since Sunday night, issues were reported in 43 feeders and by 11am yesterday all were rectified by the electricity dept staff. This was explained by an officer from Tangedco.
It was later revealed by another officer from Tangedco that first rains were always an issue as rain water would seep into weak insulators leading to power disruptions. He added that the time taken to replace the insulators would lead to delay in the power restoration.
Information is that a fault in the busbar at Koyambedu substation and flashing of insulator at Ambattur SIPCOT substation has resulted in the failure for nearly 25 feeders.