Three power grids collapse under stress of excess withdrawals

SIKKIM FORTUNATE TO BE AMONG FIRST STATES WHERE POWER SUPPLY WAS RESTORED
GANGTOK, 01 July: While there were rumours initially that it could take up to a couple of days for Sikkim to see some lights again, the State was fortunate to receive power from the north eastern power grid within 7 hours of the biggest blackout India has ever experienced. Other parts of the country had to wait much longer for power supply to resume with electricity returning to Kolkata only at around 1 a.m. this morning. More than half of the country suffered a collective load shedding yesterday when three of the 5 electricity grids of India collapsed.
While the exact cause of the grid failure has not been explained, Power Grid officials while speaking to NOW! on Tuesday had confirmed the failure of the Eastern and North Eastern grids at around 1 p.m. yesterday. Before that, the North Grid had collapsed for the second day in a row.
In-charge of the Power Grid substation here, DK Chettri, explained that with the collapse of the Eastern grid, the north eastern grid too had failed since both are connected.
Sikkim, being part of the north eastern grid too reeled under the power outage along with all other north eastern states, West Bengal and Odisha, which are connected to the Eastern grid. In fact Tuesday saw the failure of the northern grid as well which supplies power to the northern states and it was the failure of the other two grids which then affected Sikkim.
An official informed NOW! that there had been a failure in the transmission lines in the grid. Later, Power Grid officials informed that restoration work was under process and power supply should resume within a few hours.
The Northern power grid tripped for the second consecutive day on Tuesday and in a cascading effect [not seen on Monday], the Eastern and North-Eastern grids collapsed as well. Once again, Uttar Pradesh (UP) emerged as the main culprit. It tried to withdraw more than its share of power supply that set a cascading effect as power station after power station shut down and a doomsday scenario became all too real.
The Power Grid Corporation of India on Monday tried to manage the crisis by drawing power from the Eastern grid. But UP ignored the warnings sent out on Monday and again drew nearly 1,000MW of excess power sending out a cascading affect. The Eastern grid was the first to collapse and power stations in the Northern grid, starved of electricity, began to shut down. As the crisis spread, the North-Eastern power grid also collapsed and suddenly 20 states from Jammu & Kashmir to Assam were staring at the biggest power outage in history, with as many as 600 million affected.
State administration officials when contacted were largely unaware of the power grid collapse. The north east grid tripped at around 1 PM resulting in the entire state being left without power supply. It was a frightening situation for those in the know as it was uncertain as to how long it would take for power supply to resume.
Power grid officials informed that all power houses in the state including those at Teesta, Rangit including the substations at Siliguri right down to Malda, Durgapur, Subhasgram and also in the north east had been shut down and had no power. Essential and emergency services in the state mainly in the hospitals and PHCs were largely unaffected as the outage was only for a few hours and moreover, most of the hospitals including the STNM hospital have back ups in the form of generators which can sustain supply for hours after the power supply has been suspended.
However, banking services were affected with link failure and people were also experiencing mobile communication problems. With most mobile towers servicing more than one company their power back up too was experiencing pressure and had the blackout continued for a few hours longer mobile connectivity could have gone dead as well.
Being a power surplus state has nothing to do with experiencing power failures during a nation wide blackout as the power generated here is sent to the power grid from where it is routed back to the state. However with such grid collapses threatening to become more common, the state would do well to look into this issue and thrash out a contingency plan to deal with it.