Tura, May 11: The Meghalaya Energy Corporation Limited (MeECL) has revised the load shedding hours for Tura and West Garo Hills (WGH), effective from May 11, 2023 until further notice.
As per the updated schedule, residents of Tura town will face 8-hours of power cuts from 11:00 PM to 02:00 AM, 04:00 AM to 07:00 AM, and 03:00 PM to 05:00 PM.
On the other hand, residents of other areas of WGH will have to face 10 hours of power cuts from 11:00 PM to 02:00 AM, 04:00 AM to 07:00 AM, 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM, and 02:00 PM to 05:00 PM.
Mentionably, Shillong also has a 8-hour long power cut, spread across the day. The power cuts are from 10 AM to 11 AM, 1 PM to 3 PM and 12 AM (midnight) to 5 AM.
The whole of Meghalaya is going through a severe power crunch due to shutting down of some important power plants across the country, thereby reducing Meghalaya’s share from the central power grid pool. At the same time, the state is also going through financial strain, which has rendered it incapacitated to buy power from private companies, whose rates are on the higher sides.
Earlier, Power Minister AT Mondal had informed that shutdowns of power projects like Kopili stage-I of 200 MW from where the state gets 35MW as share, Khandong power station of 50 MW (state share is 8.51MW) and Kopili stage-II of 25 MW (state share is 3.45 MW) has badly affected Meghalaya. He also informed that the Leshka power project has also been shut down completely because of no water.
Recently, the Chairman of MeECL had told the Meghalaya High Court that the State’s monthly demand of power is to the extent of 200 million units whereas the availability is only 88 million units.
