MUMBAI, May 16 -- An ageing power cable network, rising power demand, unprecedented summer heat and rapid real-estate expansion has begun to take a toll. It's causing frequent power outages and outages in localities where there used to be none - a warning that local fixes and temporary solutions will not hold for long. Residents of Dadar, Sion, Wadala, Matunga, Borivali and Vile Parle will vouch for this. They experienced power outages ranging 10 minutes to 10 hours in the last fortnight as temperatures soared to 40 degrees Celsius. For businesses and residents in Dadar, the timing could not have been worse. On May 14, 3,000 consumers of BEST, residents and shopkeepers in Dadar and Matunga, were stranded without electricity for 10 hours. It struck on a day when Mumbai's peak electricity demand breached the 4,500-megawatt (MW) threshold for the first time, driven by a blistering heatwave and the non-stop operation of cooling air-conditioning systems. In summer, peak demand typically hovers around 3,900-4,000 MW. Rajkumar Dubey, 52, who has owned Aishwarya Collections near Dadar's Plaza Cinema for 35 years, says the outage was unprecedented. "New skyscrapers are coming up everywhere, which has massively increased the demand for electricity and the load on the system. Combined with frequent road works, our cables keep getting damaged," Dubey said. On Thursday, nearly 1,500 shops around Dadar market suffered average losses of Rs.10,000 each. "Customers refused to enter shops as it was pitch dark inside, and the BEST control room wasn't giving us any definite time for restoration," he said. Residential areas fared no better. The first outage occurred at 4.30am but the second one, at 11:00am, was a lot worse. Not far away, residents of Sion and Wadala were without electricity in the evening. Locals said this was the second outage in the last few months. Many areas in the western suburbs too have experienced power breakdowns in recent times. In Vile Parle east, senior citizen Neeta Siddhaye said, "All the lights went off around midnight. The outage lasted only a few minutes, but it was enough to interrupt our sleep," she said. In Borivali west, Badal Agarwal, a resident of LIC Colony, said: "We've never had power outage problems before but, in the few weeks, we've experienced quite a few power cuts." Distribution companies blame frequent power outages on the rising demand for power, attributed to the extremely hot and humid weather. BEST sources say this is testing the city's aging electrical infrastructure. Since local plants only generate a fraction of what the city consumes, the remaining 3,650 MW is sucked into the metropolitan region through external transmission networks, putting pressure on receiving substations and ageing underground cables. According to Adani Electricity, demand has already crossed an all-time high of 2,400 MW in the suburbs, reflecting the impact of extreme summer temperatures. "Peak demand is typically experienced in June, just before the monsoon, and we are preparing accordingly," said a spokesperson for Adani Electricity. BEST officials said a project to replace the city's ageing underground cable network has already commenced. "The 80-year-old cable network is being replaced by us in a phased manner," said a BEST official. A Tata Power spokesperson said as summer conditions had stabilised, the company did not expect any further rise in power demand in the coming days....