Chennai: After a brief lull, unscheduled and prolonged power cuts are back in the city. On Friday night, residents of R K Nagar staged a road blockade, bringing vehicle movement to a halt in protest against night-time outages that occur almost every other day.Residents of Mayor Basudev Street blocked Tiruvottiyur High Road, demanding immediate restoration of power supply. The TNPDCL section officer in R K Nagar held talks with the protesters and assured them that power supply would be restored by Saturday morning. Vinayakam, a resident, said they have been facing power cuts almost every day over the week. “The power supply was suspended on Thursday night. We thought there were some unavoidable glitches. It happened again on Friday night. It’s too hot,” he said.TNPDCL assistant executive engineer Chockalingam said only a few streets were affected due to an underground fault. “We had rectified another fault on Thursday night, but the cable failed at another joint on Friday night. We have fixed that too. Now, we have identified another fault. It will be rectified to ensure uninterrupted power supply,” he said. The officer said the underground cables were 20 years old and were susceptible to failures even from minor damage.While a 110kV feeder failed in North Chennai on Friday, TNPDCL officials said that it was exclusive to a private firm and did not have any impact on residential areas. Apart from R K Nagar, prolonged power cuts were reported in K K Nagar, Anna Nagar, Semmachery, Tambaram and Ezhil Nagar on Friday. Underground cable faults were reported in Seven Wells, Chintadripet and Saidapet on Saturday as well.Meanwhile, the state’s power demand continued to be high on Friday. The peak power demand crossed 21,000 MW, while total power consumption was 470 million units.
