Varinder Singh Tribune News Service Patiala, July 24 Prolonged power cuts have made life of urban and rural people miserable and the Punjab State Electricity Board (PSEB) has been blaming shutting down of three National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) plants for bad power position in the state. The PSEB has claimed daily power cuts were of six hours, consumers say in fact, unannounced power cuts even exceed eight hours a day in certain parts of the state and power fluctuation was also damaging electronic equipment. Prolonged power tripping has hit the industry across the state as it has been resulting in increase in production cost as the industry was forced to depend on diesel generators. "Long power cuts have thrown life out of gear. These have even rendered inverters useless as they require long charging time. Electronic gadgets worth crores like computers, EPBAXs, inverters etc. are getting damaged by power tripping ranging from twice to as many as 10 times. The life of such equipment is shortening considerably. the Industry was being simply edged out of competition as production cost has increased manifold for industries have to go for costly diesel to generate power ,' said State Bank of Patiala director Ashwani Gupta. The PSEB authorities, however, hold sudden tripping of three NTPC-operated power generation units at Singrauli (500 MW), Unchahar (210 MW) and Rehand (500 MW) in Uttar Pradesh after June 20 responsible for power cuts. Moreover, two of the three (each of 60 MW capacity) turbines at the Mukerian hydel project remained operational for the BBMB allegedly relased only 3,500 cusecs of water for the Mukerian grid for more than a month. "It is a different matter that the unit has got water supply enhanced to 6,000 cusecs and we are able to run the second turbine from today itself. We were informed the Singrauli power unit-1 would be set in order from July 8, but, it remains inoperational till date. Not only this, the Singrauli power unit-III went out of production on July 20 while, the promised commencement of power at Unchahar unit was yet to get materialised and it is expected to get in order from July 19,' said a PSEB spokesperson. Sources in the PSEB pointed out unlike in the past, the PSEB was not getting power from usually rain surplus states like Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Tamil Nadu this time for shortfall of rainfall there. Similarly, states like Gujarat, Madhya Pardesh and Maharashtra were not contributing to the northern grid. "Due to this, the PSEB cannot resort to alternative measure of overdrawing. The available power frequency at the grid was lowest at 49 hertz due to which, overdrawing option has been rendered impracticable. If we overdraw power at this juncture, we have to pay Rs 10 per units against Rs 2 to Rs 4 a unit in normal situation,' said a senior PSEB official.