Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call to Indians to switch off lights Sunday evening for nine minutes and instead use candles to “challenge the darkness” of the coronavirus outbreak will mean blackouts for some citizens as utilities take steps to safeguard their equipment.
Modi asked people to switch off lights at 9 p.m. That may result in a sudden drop of about 15 gigawatt of power demand across the nation, said S.N. Sahai, secretary in the nation’s power ministry. In Uttar Pradesh, India’s most-populated state, the state-run utility plans to switch off power in phases to stop the surge in voltage from threatening the state’s power grid and equipment, U.P. Power Transmission Corp. said in a letter sent to generators.The country plans to switch off some of its hydropower generation capacity to deal with the sudden dip in demand, Sahai said.
While India has barely tested 66,000 for the disease in the world’s most populated nation after China, Modi has spoken to his citizens twice, each time asking them to do a new activity to show solidarity in the fight against the disease. The prime minister asked Indians to clap, rings bells, bang utensils and blow conch shells on March 22, and this time, switch off lights and use candles.