Team Herald
MARGAO: Margao residents have had a harrowing time for the last few days due to repeated disruptions in power supply. This was when the sun was shining bright. But when it rained today, supply was distrupted in most parts of the city. A couple of days back lightning struck the 100 MVA transformer at Xeldem throwing the entire power distribution network into disarray due to which not only Margao but entire South Goa had to experience regular power interruptions.
According to Shivshankar the engineer at Xeldem, they had to use the stand by transformer on which around 80 MVA of power was loaded leaving a backlog of 20 which was handled by rotating the power supply to different places and having load shedding at some places. To make matter worse for the power department officials, the alternative they had was to use the power from Ponda but the line from Ponda to Xeldem was faulty and could not bear the required load.
While the situation at Xeldem was coming under control, Margao section was hit with another problem that resulted in many parts of town not having power in the morning.
It is learnt the transformer at Khareband crashed and the entire area serviced by that transformer suffered a black out. By afternoon some bit of the load from Khareband transformer was loaded on the Navelim transformer and power was restored. However, this situation will not give much relief as the Navelim section has overhead wires feeding the power and with the wind blowing strongly, contact between a tree branch and the wires will result in power disruption.
