<p> With the mercury soaring in the past couple of days, hour-long outages have been giving sleepless nights to people in east Delhi's Mayur Vihar Phase 1.<br /><br /></p>.<p>The power discom in the concerned area, however, claimed that these blackouts were caused by “local faults”.<br /><br />Last week, the power regulator, Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC), had passed a notification penalising discoms to pay between Rs 25 and Rs 100 to every consumer for power cuts for every subsequent hour beyond the grace period given to them to fix a glitch.<br /><br />“Power cuts have become an everyday phenomenon. And for the past two days it has become worse. On Friday night, the electricity went out three times in the middle of the night,” said homemaker Romita Gupta.<br /><br />“Saturday night was the worst. There was no power in the area from 12.45 am to 2 am,” he, a resident of Pocket 4, Mayur Vihar Phase 1, added.<br /><br />The local electricity complaint centre told DH that due to “some fault” the electricity supply was cut off from the grid for the whole area at around 10.30 pm on Friday.<br />“The power had to be cut on Saturday as there was a fire in a ‘group meter box’. We wouldn't have been able to rectify the fault without shutting down the power supply,” said an official.<br /><br />People have also been complaining of electricity cuts during the day.<br />“The power went out a couple of times during Saturday morning. The longest was for over an hour during noon,” said Lalit Yadav, a retired government employee. Last week, the DERC had amended the DERC Supply Code and Performance Standards Regulations, penalising discoms for unscheduled power cuts.<br /><br />As per the amended rules, the discoms will have to pay Rs 100 to every consumer for a power cut for every hour beyond three hours, if the failure is due to “fuse blown out or MCB tripped”.<br /><br />In case of power supply failure, the discom has to pay compensation to the affected consumers by adjusting the amount against current or future bills within 90 days.<br /><br />"If the licensee fails to pay compensation, the affected consumer(s) may approach the Ombudsman. In case the claim for compensation is upheld by the Ombudsman, the compensation shall be determined by the Ombudsman at the rate of Rs 5,000 or five times the compensation payable as per Schedule-III to these Regulations, whichever is higher," the city government had said in a statement.<br /><br />Hearing the complaints of outages, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Power Minister Satyendar Jain had directed the city’s power department to take steps to penalise discoms for inefficiency on their part.<br /><br />Delhi government issued the policy direction to the DERC under sections 108 of the Electricity Act, 2013 for compensation to consumers for prolonged unscheduled powercuts.<br /><br /></p>
<p> With the mercury soaring in the past couple of days, hour-long outages have been giving sleepless nights to people in east Delhi's Mayur Vihar Phase 1.<br /><br /></p>.<p>The power discom in the concerned area, however, claimed that these blackouts were caused by “local faults”.<br /><br />Last week, the power regulator, Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC), had passed a notification penalising discoms to pay between Rs 25 and Rs 100 to every consumer for power cuts for every subsequent hour beyond the grace period given to them to fix a glitch.<br /><br />“Power cuts have become an everyday phenomenon. And for the past two days it has become worse. On Friday night, the electricity went out three times in the middle of the night,” said homemaker Romita Gupta.<br /><br />“Saturday night was the worst. There was no power in the area from 12.45 am to 2 am,” he, a resident of Pocket 4, Mayur Vihar Phase 1, added.<br /><br />The local electricity complaint centre told DH that due to “some fault” the electricity supply was cut off from the grid for the whole area at around 10.30 pm on Friday.<br />“The power had to be cut on Saturday as there was a fire in a ‘group meter box’. We wouldn't have been able to rectify the fault without shutting down the power supply,” said an official.<br /><br />People have also been complaining of electricity cuts during the day.<br />“The power went out a couple of times during Saturday morning. The longest was for over an hour during noon,” said Lalit Yadav, a retired government employee. Last week, the DERC had amended the DERC Supply Code and Performance Standards Regulations, penalising discoms for unscheduled power cuts.<br /><br />As per the amended rules, the discoms will have to pay Rs 100 to every consumer for a power cut for every hour beyond three hours, if the failure is due to “fuse blown out or MCB tripped”.<br /><br />In case of power supply failure, the discom has to pay compensation to the affected consumers by adjusting the amount against current or future bills within 90 days.<br /><br />"If the licensee fails to pay compensation, the affected consumer(s) may approach the Ombudsman. In case the claim for compensation is upheld by the Ombudsman, the compensation shall be determined by the Ombudsman at the rate of Rs 5,000 or five times the compensation payable as per Schedule-III to these Regulations, whichever is higher," the city government had said in a statement.<br /><br />Hearing the complaints of outages, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Power Minister Satyendar Jain had directed the city’s power department to take steps to penalise discoms for inefficiency on their part.<br /><br />Delhi government issued the policy direction to the DERC under sections 108 of the Electricity Act, 2013 for compensation to consumers for prolonged unscheduled powercuts.<br /><br /></p>
