Chennai: Several neighbourhoods in the city faced power cuts on Sunday because of feeder trips, transformer faults and maintenance work carried out by Tamil Nadu Power Distribution Corporation Ltd (TNPDCL) teams.In Flower Bazaar, power supply to Mint Street and Narayana Chetty Street was suspended from 10.30 am to 6.30 pm for the installation of a ring main unit (RMU), which replaced the existing structure. In Chintadripet and Muthialpet, power supply was suspended for almost the entire day. “These are commercial areas, and carrying out maintenance on Sundays causes less disruption to shops,” said an official.Meanwhile, power cuts caused by faults in the distribution network continued to affect different parts of the city. In Perambur, outages happened at 3am after a feeder drawing power from the Seimbum 33/11 kV substation tripped . Power supply was restored nearly three hours later. In Ennore and Tiruvottiyur, feeder trips led to day-long power cuts on Sunday. In Neelankarai, a feeder trip led to a five-hour outage in areas such as Saraswathy Nagar.TNPDCL personnel said the outages were not planned and were caused by damage to underground cables by stormwater-drain contractors.Meanwhile, TNPDCL has instructed field personnel to adhere to scheduled outage timings for maintenance work after social-media posts claimed that outages could last up to eight hours in the coming days. TNPDCL denied the claim and said the power-supply situation was manageable. It added that it had surplus power during the day because of increased solar-power generation. “In some areas, restoration may be delayed because of prolonged work. But we have instructed field personnel to complete the maintenance before the scheduled time,” said a senior official.
