NEW DELHI, Aug 1:
More than 20 hours after the country’s worst power failure, the three major electricity grids that had collapsed have been restored, Power Grid said today.
The Northern, Eastern and North Eastern Grids-that cater to over half of the country’s 1.2 billion population-were restored by around 0930 hrs today.
Triggering a massive power crisis, which brought most parts of the country to a grinding halt, the three grids collapsed at 1300 hours yesterday.
According to state-run Power Grid, 100 per cent supplies have been restored in all the three regions.
“System restored to normal state,” Power Grid said in a statement.
Full power supply of 30,081 MW has been restored in the northern region, including Delhi.
Eastern region, which caters to 10 states and has the largest infrastructure in the country with at least 25,000 MW generation capacity, was the last one to be restored.
“In the Eastern region, 100 per cent or 11,052 MW supply has been fully restored,” it said.
Till late last evening, only 50 per cent of the eastern region had enough electricity supplies.
The North East was the first one to be fully restored, last evening.
Even though the exact reason is yet to be ascertained, officials said that problems started in the Eastern Grid and there could also have been over drawals by some states.
The power failure happened at 1 PM on Tuesday, less than 24 hours after the supply from the Northern Grid was restored following an outage on early Monday morning that affected over 30 crore people.
For the first time, the three inter-state transmission networks tripped together. While no official reason was given for the failure, sources said the trouble started in the Eastern Grid.
Yesterday’s failure hit the Talcher-Kolar HVDC (High Voltage Direct Current) transmission line, considered Asia’s longest running from Odisha to Karnataka.
Eastern region has the biggest power infrastructure in the country having at least 25,000 MW generation capacity. Most of them are thermal plants since the area is abundant in coal resources.
Further, electricity generated from projects in this region caters to at least ten states in the country. (PTI)
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