The northern grid crashed early on Monday in one of the worst outages in more than a decade, plunging eight States into darkness, affecting inter-State train operations and health services and impacting millions of lives.
The 400-kV Bina-Gwalior line, feeding the Agra-Bareilly transmission section, tripped at 2.35 a.m. and wreaked havoc on the generation and transmission systems, shutting down all major plants, including hydropower stations, in Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Delhi, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and the Union Territory of Chandigarh, all wired to the northern grid. The immediate impact was shortage of around 32,000 MW.
India now faces 8-12 per cent peak power deficit, according to the Central Electricity Authority (CEA).
The shutdown had a crippling effect on inter-State passenger and goods trains that came to a halt. Early morning office-goers and schoolchildren had a harrowing time, as signals were on the blink, sparking traffic chaos.
Hospitals scurried around for backup supply. A majority of the hospitals claimed to have alternative arrangements, yet health services were affected at several places. But the major oil refineries at Panipat, Mathura and Bhatinda remained unaffected as they have their own captive power plants.
While Union Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde said he could not pinpoint the reason, officials of the Power Grid Corporation of India Limited (PGCIL) and the Northern Region Load Dispatch Centre (NRLDC) said rampant over-drawal by Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana sparked the collapse.
The NRLDC is the apex body tasked with ensuring integrated operation of the power system in the region.
When the grid collapsed last time, in 2001, the supply snapped at midnight, and normality was restored by 4.30 p.m.
PGCIL Chairman and Managing Director R.N. Nayak said normality was restored by 4 p.m. The northern grid, which caters for 28 per cent of India’s population, was generating 29000 MW by late evening, about 2,000 MW of the peak demand.
Immediately after the collapse, PGCIL officials swung into action, with Mr. Nayak and his team reaching their monitoring centre at 3 a.m. to assess the situation and work on rescue measures. By 8 a.m., they claimed to have restored 40 per cent of the supply. To run essential services, power was diverted from the western and eastern grids to the northern region. Hydropower was imported from Bhutan.
Mr. Nayak could not say what caused the collapse, but said the agencies involved were at least “quick at restoring normality at a record time.”
My question is how come southern India is doing well with adherence to power grid but the north is faltering? Shouldn't the north learn how to run the power supply and obey the restrictions?
The root cause of these basic problems is Our current system & ministers.It is a fault on we indian citizens part also that,after so many years of independence we are unable to select a proper govt which could ensure all basic amenities.Unless we agitate in mass scale for these things to reduce beaurocracy & corrutpion at higher levels these will persists many more years to come.India needs change in political system else this is just a begining of dark era.A day would come and India would in Dark Black Hole and it would be near to impossible to find the beautiful,Soverign India.
Srinibalan..It's a shame that you compare the US in this scenario..I
have been living in this country for 15 years and barring few states, we
have not had such pathetic scenarios where an entire region goes dark
for hours...The response in that scenario even if it happens would be
tremondous...Also this is not mother nature to say -- this could have
not been controlled, none has monitored and controlled the usage of the
power in an optimal way which led to this situation..This is what an
inefficient government can be capable of...I am no sure that none will
be held accountable..and life will go on...
Worst situation ! where there other countries are increasing their energy powers, in the same time in india people are against the dam's, hydro powers just because of Spirituality about Ganga & Yamuna. In uttarakhand people are against the dams that will be on ganga. They are not looking on future that our all work depends on electricity. Govt have take the strict action on power projects, so that the demand of electricity will be completed. On the other hand we have also find the new sources of electricity like wind power, sea power etc.
Otherwise we always feel the same situation or may be more that this situation.
No wonder, we are in India. There are other places worse than it and hope it is not too far away...
Any system adopted needs discipline to work reasonably. power
transmission has enough instrumentation to know in real time what the
load,voltage, and frequency of power being transmitted . The power dispatch control has to instantly initiate load shedding in case of
excessive overloading of the grid. The job is similar to that of an
air traffic controller in matter of concentration and quickness of
response.So how come the entire grid collapsed ? Instrumentation
failure ? unlikely.
Having said all this we have a system of political interference in
matters of allowing or not allowing load shedding.
Easy to comment but guys understand that there are limitations to
everything. As there was an overdraw of power by few of the states, it
had resulted in the spark down. However, the dispatch center might have
restricted the consumption but needless to say it is driven purely by
the usage. Lesson to be learnt especially by the major dispatch center.
Stop blaming the incumbent govt for everything. Why people of UP, Bihar & other North Indian states consistently voted corrupt casteist politicians who did ZERO DEVELOPMENT. No big power generation plant was constructed in the past 20-25 years since the politics of Mandal (SC/ST/OBC Reservations) & Kamandal (Hindutva of upper castes) started. This Mandal/Kamandal politics has destroyed North India. The voters are more to blame as they fight each other's caste/religion more than fight against power crisis, corruption.
When power trips nobody can stop the impact.
I do not think we should be hyper-critical of this breakdown.
After all, it happens in USA and Singapore.
Ask eminent journalist V Gangadhar, he will tell you horror stories.
Also other eminent elected public personalities like Mani Shankar Ayyar have recorded the horrible state of the US Airports Trains etc.
This is a very disappointing.I am in Singapore for last 1 year and till now I have NOT seen a 1 sec power cut.
Corrupted Politicians and government officials please learn this from small country like Singapore.
The Dark ages here to stay. The current status is past plans and
efforts. If no plan solution now, then Dark ages will get repeat
intermitently. The GOVTs are pushing people's future into DARK.
The root cause is not Grid but lack of viable alternatives.
While it is easy and convenient to blame the government - present, past or future - but if we are honest with ourselves, we would find that the problem is with ourselves, the people of India. We are unwilling to pay a market rate for electrical service. Look at all the wires attached to the power poles in many areas. We cannot blame anyone else unless we are willing to accept responsibility for our own culpability.
Kudos for returning to normalcy soon on power failure at the odd hour.
The reason needs to be thoroughly studied to avoid such outages in future.
Why do they let some certain states withdraw excessive power? They should install automatic cut off devices so that whenever a state tries to withdraw power more than its allocated units the automatic device will not let it happen at all. Unfortunately system of distribution of power is totally biased. Some states are favored more and some are favored less.
Grid fail mainly because of tripping of major power circuit , major
line, or major power generating station. when ever a drawl is
higher than generation, frequency goes down . At very low frequency
Grid can't operate properly. last night Grid Tripped around 2:33
hrs and frequency at that time was around 48 htz , which should be
in between 49.7 to 50 htz for healthy operation of system. As the
Bina gwalior line tripped , major genarating units connected with
this line got tripped, and when ever quantum of this load rejection
is high , another circuit connected with this load at coomon bus
also tripped. So in cascade effect All lines and Units of NR
tripped. These kind of events are technical faults and they can
occur , we can never completely eliminate them . what is more
important is a proper statergy to face such emergency situation and
quick recovery of power system.
The truth abt SEB and Power failure is deeper than Politics-
First, for years Our Electricity Market Revenue was proportional to the
Output of individual Power Plants. ex- if I produce 520 MW I will get
more revenue from SEBs than what i would get from 500MW. Looks logical?
No.. Because demand was the same, State Transmission and Distribution
Companies didnot know what to do with the surplus and accumulated
crores of debt from NTPC and other POwer producers
Later most of the grid were inter connected and automatically it called
for policy change ( mind u ...surplus power or dearth of power..both
cause grid breakdown)...Post 2000 we follow ABT ( Availibility Based
Tariff)..here, if u produce lower or higher than what u declare 24 hrs
ago ( read wiki for more) ...u will be penalised
Coming to the grid breakdown. As per alleged this breakdown is most
likely caused by the failure to oversee the demand requirements by
individual states but we have to wait for the final investigation.
@ Gurgaon
Even now at 10:10PM in Gurgaon, Haryana there is no Power/Electricity. And we have
had this situations number of times this summer. Frequent Power Cuts, lengthy
power cuts, traffic jams, corrupt officers (police etc...), have become a common
feature here.
I am amazed at the comments on this page. What is the Government
supposed to do about these occasional accidents? I live in Rural Tamil
Nadu and despite the regulatory cuts, I am impressed that we have a
system that works efficiently most of the time.My son in Bethesda, USA
suffered a 72 hour cut in power following a blizzard one year ago. He
was surprised because in India he had never had such a long period of
power shortage.He says this is a regular winter event. So I think the
criticism mainly comes from people who hate the present government and
will find any stick with which to beat it
I would like to know financial loss due to such incident and its sharing among states?
Some faces of India ,some days back in its north-east state the people
were/are in terror of their hearth/life then the whole India behaved
nonchalantly and preoccupied in their usual pomp and show as if it was
happening in alien land .Another face today one day's power-shutdown in
the northern India look disaster for them as if it turned into war zone
or suicidal situation though there is no fear of losing life/hearth.The
value of human life is decided where one lives in .
Analyse thoughtfully, what ever reasons for the failure but restoration job before most could realise what had gone wrong is really remarkable.
power faliures are not new to india but on serious note goverment must
take some strong steps on basic things such as water and electricity as
65 years have been gone by since we got independent please think!
why this happens again & again?????
All Regional load dispatch should have special priviliges to safe the grid and also accountability to the Nation, our poltitions should understand power demand gap and tne necessary of increasing power generating capacity. And I think it's good to loose Northen grid rather than other regional grids, such that our central leaders will understand importance of increasing generating capacity.
Power outages are a common phenomenon in countries where energy consumption is very high. They are often sourced to a power ‘grid failure’. This occurs when some areas draw excessive power. This leads to automatic tripping of power and it has a cascading impact on the entire grid that supplies power to the region.
The Govt should investigate the matter thoroughly. In particular, it should find out if it was a cyber attack and if so, who did it. This idea is not far fetched these days.
India is gaining lot of experiances these days..
Better they maintain this in there records for no further issues like this !!
I just hope it happened in the Politician's/Bureaucrat's houses as well!! I will appreciate if The Hindu throws light on this.
The common man is used to such outages. Things will change if and only if Politicians too have to suffer the same fate. I am certain nothing will be learnt. If precedence teaches us anything.
Anna & his Team's clarion call for giving fillip to eligible/fresh candidates to join the political fray is the only solution to the current problems.
For sure light is there @ the end of the tunnel.
1 Even Delhi rich play a game of paying as little as Rs 500 for electricity worth Rs 2000+
2 Every North SEB has arrears going back years worth more 50-100% of equity
3 So SEBs not paying NTPC or NHPC who in turn can't pay for coal!
4 Congress worst offender offering free elec to farmers/ poor every election, eg in AP/ Punjab hence
regular write offs of dues from these sectors
5 Politically influ states like TN steal share of other states like Karnataka in Central supplies
6 States not inclined to allow other states to route supplies thru their grid without massive fees eg
Karnataka cannot get what it buys from Chattisgarh!
There should be a study on how it happened. The failure of the North Americal power grid many years ago was much studied and many lessons were learnt. A desired outcome is a set of measures on how to avoid such scenarios from recurring.
People are suffering from major problems due to mis-governance at the
Center. But, Congress ministers including Chidambaram, are busy praising
Rahul to the skies and making him a minister.
Lack of discipline in power drawal by different states might have lead
this incident.this is major failure on the power management and
coordination in India.
Engineers! please reignite the shining india
Go off grid! Its easy and with govt subsidies works out cheap.
Especially for those who stay in independent houses with their own
terrace. Spend some time do a little research and implement it in your
homes.
Hopeless situation. What has this present government achieved in last 10 years other than petty politics and wasted money and scams. How many power plants could be made from $40 Billion?
India and development? It is a joke!
Please Email the Editor