Delhi, NCR face power outages for at least twice a day: Survey

With the national capital region reeling under long spells of outages, a survey has found that power cuts occurred at least twice a day and up to four hours sometimes with worst hit being Gurgaon, Ghaziabad and Noida.

As per the survey, more than 80% of its 12,000 respondents said that on an average power outages across Delhi and NCR took place at least twice a day.

The survey by Market Xcel Data Matrix Pvt Ltd was conducted last month with sample size of 3,000 respondents each from Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida and Ghaziabad.

40% of the respondents, most of them from Ghaziabad, followed by Delhi and Gurgaon, complained of one to two hours of power outages on an average, while those from Noida said the power cut exceeded four hours in a day.

There was no particular pattern of outages determined as to whether it was more on weekdays or weekend, however, 36% respondents in Noida said the power cuts were mostly on weekends.

At least 15% claimed that power cuts occurred mostly during  afternoons while 10% said outages took place in the evenings, especially in Gurgaon, Noida followed by Delhi.

When asked about the reasons for increasing cases of power outages, people who participated in the survey blamed poor quality of power plant equipment, poor utilisation of generating equipment and poor performance by electricity department employees.

In Gurgaon, Noida and Ghaziabad, delay in construction of power projects is also considered an important reason

While 40-41% believe that poor quality of power plant equipment, maintenance and operation, about 31% blamed it on the poor performance by power plant employees.

About 28-26% also said the reason behind long outages could be increasing demand and delay in construction and approval of power projects.

Other reasons cited by respondents include transmission loss, excessive consumption of power which leads to tripping of transformers, short circuits or natural weather phenomenon such as rain, thunderstorm or dust storms.

The survey's respondents included 46% women and 54% male population with 33 percent within the age group of 26-35 years, 30% between 36-45 years and 37% between 18-25 years.