Demand for power nosedives in city as rain lowers temperature

Even after the end of agni natchathiram, the city faced a blistering heat wave with the temperature hovering around 40 to 42 degree Celsius causing severe hardship to Chennaiites. With the temperature remaining high, the power demand touched an all-time high of 3,738 MW on June 18, surpassing the previous high of 3,660 MW recorded on June 10 this year.

“For the last two weeks, the city power demand remained unusually high in the month of June coinciding with the heatwave. Normally, the city’s power demand goes up during the agni natchathiram period,” a senior Tangedco official said, adding that the light spell of rain on Thursday helped to bring down the power demand.

“The power demand has come down to 3,525 MW on Thursday from 3,730 MW on Wednesday. The demand will come down further subsequently due to the overcast weather condition prevailing in the city. This is mainly due to the reduction in the usage of the air conditioners by the residents,” the official said.

Tangedco official said that the fall in the power demand would help reduce the tripping of distribution transformers and breakers in the feeder lines in the substations that cause power outages during the night time. Weather blogger Pradeep John said that the temperature, at last, came down to 36 degree Celsius from 42 C. “Coming days are looking great for Chennai rains. We have the chance of rains tomorrow, too. With the low moving inside the mainland from the Bay of Bengal, the city likely to get rain from June 23 to 26,” he wrote in his blog.

The favourable atmospheric conditions are likely to bring light to moderate rainfall in isolated places in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry in the next two days, said Met Department on Friday. Chennai and its suburbs, which are reeling under acute water scarcity, would also receive some amount of rainfall, added Deputy Director General of Meteorology of Regional Meteorological Centre, S Balachandran. The heatwave phenomenon had intensified, as the movement of the south west monsoon northwards was blocked all these days and there had also been lesser cloud cover. Since the monsoon has begun moving north, there has been a reduction in the heatwave conditions, he added.