Technical snag disrupts power supply

It was a day of fluctuating, often erratic electricity supply after a technical snag at power generating stations saw Bangalore Electricity Supply Company (Bescom) struggle to meet the demand in the city on Tuesday.

In the morning peak hour, when the demand touched 3,635 MW, the shortfall was more than 800 MW. While officials said more than 300 MW was bought from Indian Energy Exchange (IEX), the excess demand from certain areas resulted in irregular power supply.

Lodging a complaint with Bescom, a Koramangala resident said power supply fluctuated for a few minutes, after which there was a blackout for hours. Similar complaints came in from different parts of the city.

According to Bescom, there were load restrictions on stations at Hebbal, Hoody, HSR Layout, Vrushabhavathi, Somanahalli, HAL Station, Subramanyapura, among others.

The rain through most of the day worsened the situation. The problem, which started on Monday evening, eased out late on Tuesday.

RTPS down

The source of the problem was the tripping of two generation units with a capacity of 210 MW each in Raichur Thermal Power Station (RTPS).

While Unit-5 tripped owing to technical snag, Unit-6 stopped because of a fault associated with a boiler, said sources in RTPS.

The fault at Unit-5 was rectified by Tuesday afternoon and Unit-6 resumed later in the day. However, sources pointed out that it would take a minimum of 24 hours for the thermal units to reach the full capacity.

C. Venugopal, Executive Director of RTPS, said power generation was reduced to 28.934 million units from the normal 36.24 million units per day after two units stopped generation. The RTPS has eight units (7 x 210 mw and 1 x250 mw) with a total generation capacity of 1,720 MW.