Maharashtra Experienced 30,000 Power Outages in June 2022: MSEDCL

In June of this year, there were over 30000 power outages across the state of Maharashtra, causing consumers to suffer for approximately 51,000 hours.
This data was released in the recently published Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Limited (MSEDCL) reliability indices, which reflect the state power utility’s service on various parameters, including the total number of feeders where interruptions occurred, affected consumers, the total number of interruptions, and the duration of a power outage.

According to the data, power outages increased significantly in June compared to March and the subsequent months. The data from the indices also revealed that the high number of interruptions in June affected approximately six crore consumers across the state. In May, approximately 3 crore consumers were affected, while the number stood at 4 crores in April.

Following a complaint to the Maharashtra Energy Regulatory Commission (MERC) by consumer activist Vivek Velankar, the data was released in the MSEDCL’s recently published reliability indices.

Velankar said, “The quality of power Distribution Company’s functioning is deteriorating every day. It does not publish reliability indices on time and when a complaint is filed with the MERC, then three months’ data is released within a few hours. This data which gives insights into power interruptions, the number of consumers affected, among others, needs to be analyzed by MERC and the authorities should initiate some action against those who are responsible for poor service.”

Anil Kamble, Chief PRO MSEDCL, said, “The reason for the reasonably high number of interruptions in June is due to the monsoon and the wind. It is natural, as one can see, the earlier interruptions were low.”

Earlier this year, Maharashtra had also assumed that the state would experience summer and monsoon blackouts due to a shortage of coal for power production. Since September of last year, the Centre provided sporadic coal to the state, and the situation worsened when the latter sent a letter to the RBI and other financial institutions requesting that they refrain from lending to Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Limited (MSEDCL) due to arrears of Rs 72,000 crore.