Extreme heat, load-shedding & outages compound residents’ woes

Pune: Many residents across the city complained of repeated load-shedding and prolonged power outages amid soaring temperatures on Thursday.Social media platforms and local citizens’ groups were flooded with posts and messages from residents about discomfort and inconvenience because of long outages during sweltering periods of the day.Sarang Wable, a member of Baner-Balewadi-Pashan Residents’ Association, told TOI that apart from outages, repeated voltage fluctuations have started damaging household appliances and pushing residents toward a protest. “Many residents have already been complaining about damaged appliances because of fluctuations. The fluctuations resulted in burnout of inverters, failed circuits, affected refrigerators and damaged televisions in some homes,” he said.“Several people have installed home protectors now, but not everyone can afford them. People with weak battery backups were suffering the most because the backup exhausts after an hour or so. Imagine sitting for eight or nine hours without electricity in 40°C,” Wable said.On Thursday, while maximum temperatures slightly dipped, nights remained unusually warm across Pune. Lohegaon recorded a minimum temperature of 27.2°C, Magarpatta 27.4°C, Koregaon Park 27.3°C and Shivajinagar 25.7°C, indicating elevated night-time heat.Meteorologists have said warmer nights prevent accumulated heat from dissipating effectively, making homes remain uncomfortable even after sunset. Maximum temperatures on Thursday stood at 38.6°C in Shivajinagar, 41.3°C in Lohegaon, 38.7°C in Magarpatta and 38°C in Koregaon Park.A Koregaon Park resident, Gautam Idnani, highlighted another aspect of the poor power services. He said, “MSEDCL’s IPO is likely by the end of this year. In the interest of transparency and due diligence, every power fluctuation, interruption and breakdown occurrence is system-logged so that the true picture of transmission overload, backlog of maintenance and lack of upgradation/incremental capacity is communicated to consumers & prospective investors.”A resident said a complaint lodged through the Mahavitaran app generated a message stating that power supply had been affected due to a fault in a transformer and that restoration was expected only by 11.30pm. Complaints also surfaced from areas such as Sadashiv Peth and Lohegaon, where residents said outages were stretching for hours during the hottest periods of the day.“Earlier power cuts would last one or two hours at the most. Now these cuts are stretching well above eight hours in many places. In some areas, power outages were 12 hours long. Sometimes, electricity came back briefly for two hours and then was cut again. There was no predictability anymore. In a few societies, even water tanks stopped functioning because there was no backup. People had no electricity and no water. Residents have been enraged. Hence, people from Baner, Balewadi, Pashan and nearby areas were planning a protest on Saturday evening,” Sarang Wable said.Nitin Awade, a Wanowrie resident, said residents were increasingly worried that fluctuations in outages were harming their electrical appliances. “We experienced power disruptions almost every day. Sometimes it lasted for 10 or 20 minutes, and other times one or two hours. The problem was not just the outage. When power came back, appliances did not function normally because of fluctuations. You could immediately notice it with things like microwaves and grinders. Appliances have started behaving abnormally. That’s really bad for electrical equipment, and it has become much more noticeable in the last few days,” he said.These outages, load-shedding and harsh summer triggered old memories in some Pune residents. They recalled that summers in the city were once considerably milder. Ameet Singh, a city-based working professional, said, “Earlier, fans were barely needed even during summer months. Sleeping on terraces once required blankets because nights used to be borderline cold.”Summers in Pune once felt dramatically different, said a Vimannagar resident, Raja Subramani. “Power cuts have now become harder to endure because of rising heat,” he underlined. “Outages nowadays have become highly disruptive. During morning hours, the routine was being delayed due to cuts. Last week, it became difficult because of maintenance-related outages. Nights were even worse because fans stopped working and there was hardly any wind movement,” he said.