Amid the national Capital experiencing severe heatwave, a power outage on Tuesday’s afternoon in Delhi due to a fire incident at 400 KV Mandola Grid Sub Station affected several areas and left the public gasping for breath in the blistering heat.

According to Tata Power, which is supplying electricity to a seven million people in North Delhi, this led to disruption of power in areas like Narela, Bhalaswa, Burari , Badli, Dheerpur, Shakti Nagar, Swiss apartment, Civil Lines, Model Town, Kashmiri Gate, Shahjada Bagh , Delhi University, GTB Nagar area, Mukherjee Nagar and Jahangirpuri. This resulted in load shedding of 440 MW and affecting about four lakh Delhiites, starting at 2:11 pm.

The power outage reportedly lasted for about an hour in the noon when temperature hovered around 45 degrees celsius in the city. “Almost immediately, alternate supply was arranged from other grids and supply restoration started by 14.58 pm thereby having minimum impact on our consumers,” said a Tata Power-DDL official.

“On top priority, DTL grid sub-stations restored supply in a phased manner in the affected areas first at the 220 KV grid stations at Narela, Kashmiri Gate, Gopalpur and Subji Mandi. All of the restoration work was completed within an hour. Tata Power-DDL restored some of its areas from other Grids leveraging their network, with support of DTL,” they further stated. Delhi’s peak power demand usually occurs in late June or early July, except for last year when it peaked in August. However, this year the trend changed due to weather conditions that increased the use of air conditioners and coolers, boosting electricity consumption.