Long, unannounced power cuts leave Avadi residents struggling

Chennai: Frequent, prolonged power cuts over the past two weeks have left residents across the Avadi Corporation limits struggling through intense summer heat, with many areas facing outages lasting four to five hours every day.For the last two weeks, 38-year-old Karthika has been sitting beside her young children every night and fanning them by hand so they could sleep through the heat. Her situation reflects the difficulties faced by hundreds of residents in areas including Gopalapuram, Thandurai, Kamaraj Nagar and Thirumullaivoyal.With temperatures ranging between 38 and 41°C the outages have disrupted daily life. Residents said that no prior announcements or alerts were issued regarding the timing or duration of the cuts.T Sadagopan, president of the Tamil Nadu Progressive Consumer Welfare Association, said the long-pending upgradation of the Avadi substation was one of the reasons. “The upgradation of the Avadi substation from 110 KV to 230KV has remained incomplete for more than five years,” he said.C Sridhar Kumar, general secretary of Pattabiram Gopalapuram Residents Association, said: “On Wednesday night, the transformer in West Gopalapuram burst around 10pm. When we contacted the executive engineer, they said the transformer would be replaced by 4am. However, they only restored it by 5pm the next day.” He also said, “population has grown rampantly in the last five years. Currently, there are 9,000 residents in the proximity, but the power load has not been increased proportionately.”TNPDCL officials were unavailable for comment.