New Delhi’s power plants may have to shut down in the coming days. Power outages lasting up to eight hours in Pakistan due to technical overload.
The extreme heat wave that has been raging across much of India and Pakistan since March is increasingly causing the collapse of power supplies in both countries. While power cuts of up to eight hours a day have already been reported in some Pakistani cities, authorities in New Delhi warned on Friday that many power plants would only be operational for “less than a day” for technical reasons. and at the same time the increase in energy consumption of air conditioning and refrigerators, for example.
Temperatures in the Indian capital rose to over 43 degrees Celsius on Friday and are expected to drop just a few degrees over the next few days. In Pakistan it was also (with the exception of the northern mountain regions) mostly hotter than 37 degrees.
“The situation across India is devastating,” said Arvind Kejriwal of the regional government of the Indian capital region. He warned of the potentially dramatic effects of power outages in New Delhi’s hospitals and subways.
Since March, India and Pakistan have already experienced several unusual heat waves with record temperatures of around 40 degrees Celsius, and it is particularly hot again at the moment. Many scientists attribute the increasingly intense heat waves and persistent droughts to climate change.
(AFP/APA/red.)