NEW DELHI, July 30:
Entire North India today plunged into the worst power crisis in a decade throwing normal life out of gear for several hours in eight States with collapse of the Northern Grid early morning.
From Railways to Delhi Metro to water supplies, many of the services were severely hit since the grid failed at 2:35 am. Office-goers and students faced harrowing times in the national capital where the Metro train services were disrupted.
Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir suffered the power outage. Besides, Union Territory of Chandigarh was also snapped from the grid.
In Jammu and Kashmir, which is already reeling under acute power crisis, the collapse of the Northern Grid increased the miseries of people as water supply could not be made to most parts of the State in the absence of electricity supply.
According to the Jammu and Kashmir State Load Dispatch Centre, soon after the Northern Grid failure, it was decided to run the hydroelectric projects in isolation.
The Power Development Department in coordination with NHPC and State Power Development Corporation first operated Baglihar and Salal hydroelectric projects in isolation and charged the Kishenpur-Wagoora line to synchronize Uri hydroelectric project, which doesn’t run in isolation.
Subsequently, all the power projects got synchronized with each other and following stability of the Northern Grid, all the projects of J&K were connected with it. It was only at around one in the afternoon that the power supply was completely restored.
The Kashmir valley, where tourist season is at its peak, also faced major power crisis. The Valley is importing 400 MW from the Northern Grid through Kishenpur-Wagoora transmission line while the local power houses are generating 500 MWs.
But due to major fault, the Power Development Department could not regulate 500 MWs as entire system is connected with the Northern Grid.
Power Minister Sushilkumar Shinde said that in 2001 and 2002, grid failure had happened. After 10 years it has happened now…The grid at that time (2001-02) failed during midnight and was only restored at 4:30 pm.
A three-member committee has been formed to inquire into grid failure, he said, adding “the panel will submit its report in the next 15 days”.
He said, “the fault is not known as yet… Somewhere near Agra, a failurehas happened. We will inquire…”. However, Delhi Power Minister Haroon Yusuf blamed neighbouring States for over drawing electricity from the grid.
Services of about 300 trains, including Rajdhani, Shatbadi and Duronto, were severely affected.
The grid failure not only impacted more than one fourth of the country’s population but also several industrial areas and the information technology services in Gurgaon and Noida in the NCR region.
“We have completely restored the Northern Grid. Right now, there is about 28,000 to 30,000 MW available in the grid,” Power Grid Corp CMD R N Nayak said in the evening.
Country’s largest power producer NTPC’s six plants, having a total capacity of over 8,000 MW, were hit by the collapse.
In the evening, an NTPC official said all the affected plants have resumed operations and are now connected to the grid.
NTPC’s six plants — Singrauli (2,000 MW), Rihand (2,500 MW), Dadri (1,820 MW), Auriya (652 MW), Anta (413 MW) and Badarpur (705 MW) — stopped generating following the failure. Many of them were being partially restored, the official said.
India has five electricity grids — Northern, Eastern, North Eastern, Southern and Western. All of them are inter- connected, except the Southern grid.
All the grids are being run by the State-owned Power Grid Corporation, which operates more than 95,000 circuit km of transmission lines. One circuit km refers to one kilometre of electrical transmission line.
Meanwhile, Chandrajit Banerjee, Director General, CII said that grid failure was extremely unfortunate as it has impacted not just businesses but also essential services across North India.
“While investigations are on to find the root cause for this incident, the grid code notified by CERC should be strictly implemented and violators penalized”, he said, adding “the increasing gap between the demand and supply of electricity has been a matter of concern”. (AGENCIES)
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