'Don't lay siege to substations': power minister scolds Tamil Nadu as unannounced blackouts bite

Chennai: Tamil Nadu's electricity minister CTR Nirmal Kumar has asked the public not to obstruct the field staff of the state power utility TNPDCL while they work to restore supply, even as unannounced power cuts spread across the state. Speaking to reporters after Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay's maiden inspection of the TNEB headquarters on Anna Salai on Wednesday, the minister said people's "frustration over interruptions in power supply is palpable, but they should not lay siege to substations and disturb field personnel who are busy fixing the problem." The minister was responding to a question about TNPDCL officers being unreachable by phone when consumers try to report power cuts. He said field officers have now been permitted to engage up to 18,000 workers on contract to handle faults, and promised that 6,000 transformers would be installed and upgraded within a year. Tamil Nadu, he added, needs 600 new substations to strengthen the distribution network, to be set up in a phased manner over the next five years. The more politically pointed part of his briefing was where the blame landed: on the previous DMK government. "Citing elections, the previous government postponed the maintenance of TNPDCL distribution assets like substations and transformers, which eventually could not withstand the surging load and failed, leading to power cuts," Nirmal Kumar said, according to a Times of India report. The admission of a failing grid sits uncomfortably beside the scale of the crisis. With wind power generation collapsing well before the end of the season, parts of suburban Chennai are reporting two to four hours of unannounced cuts every day, and some districts more than six hours, according to local reporting. One generation unit each at North Chennai, Mettur and Tuticorin has been shut for annual maintenance, supply from the central grid has dipped, and with demand at 12,704 MW against a shortfall of 1,785 MW, the cuts are structural rather than incidental. The minister said a detailed plan has been drawn up to meet next summer's peak demand and was presented to the chief minister during the inspection. An AI-enabled grievance redressal mechanism for electricity consumers is in the offing, and the state's battery energy storage policy, meant to bank excess wind and solar power for peak hours, is to be released in October. The messaging tells its own story. A government barely settled into its chair is already reaching backward for someone to blame, even as it reaches forward with promises measured in years: 600 substations over five, 6,000 transformers in one. The people sitting in the dark are measuring in hours. The blame travels to the past; the bill travels to the present.