Mumbai faces frequent power cuts as demand breaches 4,500 MW
Mumbai's been dealing with frequent power cuts lately, thanks to a spike in electricity use, lots of new construction, and aging infrastructure.
Neighborhoods like Dadar, Sion, Wadala, Borivali, and Vile Parle have seen outages ranging from just 10 minutes to a tough 10 hours as temperatures soared to 40 Celsius.
On May 14, demand breached the 4,500-MW threshold, way above the usual summer range, mostly because everyone's cranking up their ACs.
Dadar Matunga outage hits 3,000 users
These blackouts haven't just been annoying: they've hit local shops and residents hard.
In Dadar and Matunga alone, a single 10-hour outage on May 14 left about 3,000 users in the dark; shop owners reported losing around ₹10,000 each that day.
Many homes keep facing repeat blackouts due to damaged underground cables, a problem made worse by all the ongoing real estate projects across the city.
Distributors report feeder fault, cable damage
Power distributors like BEST and Adani Electricity say a BEST feeder-line fault and cable damage from civil work are behind these cuts.
They're working on phased cable replacements and more preventive checks but admit that summer conditions have stabilized and no significant increase is anticipated.