In a major accident that took place in the 400 KV sub-station of TS-Transco at Mamidipally village on the outskirts of the city, near Shamshabad, late on Thursday night, a 315 MVA transformer was gutted along with adjoining transmission system equipment.
The engineers of the Transco stationed at the sub-station noticed the fire immediately after it was seen on the transformer around 10 p.m. and alerted the nearby fire stations and switched it off to prevent further damage and diverted the load to other transformers in the sub-stations. The fire tenders rushed there and put off the fire before it could spread to other equipment and transformers of the sub-station.
Chairman of TS-Transco D. Prabhakar Rao rushed to the spot immediately after learning about the incident along with other higher officials and engineers of the power utility. When contacted, Mr. Rao said the immediate reason for the fire assessed to be internal problem developed within the 25-year-old transformer.
He stated that there would not be any impact on power supply to the City and other area linked to the sub-station as three other transformers were there to take the load. At the time of the incident, the damaged transformer was bearing about 30% of the load and immediately on noticing the fire, the control room switched the load to other sub-stations in the transmission system.
Officials of the Transco stated that the loss due to fire could be about ₹2 crore as per the preliminary assessment and it was not known whether the damaged transformer could be repaired for use again or had to be replaced. The authorities thanked the fire services department for rushing fire tenders immediately to limit the damage due to fire mishap.
