Now power cuts will be notified through texts in Noida

NOIDA: If you're a Noida resident, you would have by now resigned to the city's erratic and long power cuts. But what if you got an SMS alert before the lights went out? You might get the time to plan to spend those hours in the free ka AC of a mall, or at a restaurant, or just pretend to work and stay extra hours in office. Basically, if you get to know about a power cut in advance, you won't have to make do with the inverter's slow-running fan.This summer, you might just get less heartburn from powercuts as the Noida Power Company Limited (NPCL) will send out an SMS alert before every power cut in your area.
The SMS will be sent irrespective of whether the power cut is because of a breakdown of the distribution transformer, a short supply, maintenance work or a fault in the transmission wires. The NPCL, which holds the franchise for power distribution in Noida and Greater Noida, will send text messages before every power cut. However, it won't be directly sent to the residents. The RWA (Resident Welfare Association) officials of different areas will receive the messages, who will then forward them to others.
RWA officials say that with the rising temperature, power cuts have become more frequent. And so, they demanded for a power cut schedule in advance. Harinder Bhati, an RWA official at Sector Beta-1 of Greater Noida, told us, "The NPCL officials assured us that they will make arrangements to send message alerts if there is going to be a power cut. Then we will inform the residents of our society."
Another RWA president (Sector Delta-2), Ilam Singh, who is also the president of Federation of Noida Resident Welfare Association, said, "When there is a power outage, we also have to deal with a water crisis – you can't run the water pump with an inverter. So, if we get to know that there'll be, say, a four-hour power outage the next morning, we'll store water and fill the tanks the previous evening. Such small steps will prove quite helpful for everyone."
Rajesh Bhati, RWA member, Sector Alpha 2, said, "Some people keep using all electronic appliances on inverter, thinking the power supply will resume in a bit. But in the last few years, we've had outages for as long as 12-15 hours. In such extreme cases, SMS alerts will really help."