North India powerless for 12 hours

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, JAN. 2. The entire North India went without power for almost 12 hours from 4- 45 a.m. on Tuesday. It was only at 4 p.m. on Tuesday that the supply was resumed in a phased manner. The magnitude of the collapse of the northern grid - covering Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan - was such that the Central Government instituted an inquiry to find the cause of the failure and also fix responsibility. The inquiry committee has been given one week to file its report.

The Union Minister for Power, Mr. Suresh Prabhu, and other top officials of the electricity utilities cited technical reasons as the cause for the collapse. However, Mr. Prabhu did not out rule out sabotage: ``I don't want to prejudge the issue.''

The collapse was triggered at the Panki (near Kanpur) sub-station in Uttar Pradesh where a fault occurred at about 3-10 a.m. Immediately, a number of lines such as the Panki-Muradnagar, Obra-Panki went out of operation. This breakdown, along with the closure of one unit of the Rihand-Dadri high-voltage direct current line, because of failure of converter transformers, created a very critical situation due to overloading of the transmission system.

Soon, all transmission lines carrying power from the major power plants in eastern Uttar Pradesh to the western part of the regional grid tripped at 4-45 a.m. The cascading effect led to the collapse of the entire northern grid with a loss of about 15,500 MW of generation.

Standby too fails

Mr. Prabhu disclosed that the stand-by system also failed, not once but repeatedly. Since a collapsed system has to be recharged with start-up power, electricity was drawn from the eastern and the western grids, but the Bhakra hydro-electric project failed at the same time. Thus, the stand-by system too went out of operation.

It was only around noon that the Singrauli and Rihand units of the NTPC were synchronised to the grid and generation of about 2,500 MW was achieved by 4 p.m. The national capital, too, was plunged in darkness, including the VIP areas for some time.

Then the two gas turbines of the Delhi Vidyut Board started supplying power to the New Delhi area which is where the President, the Prime Minister and all other important personalities and officials reside.

Mr. Prabhu admitted that when there was a power failure of the magnitude that took place today, there was bound to be large- scale disruption in daily activity and economic loss. ``But I cannot quantify it.''

The Minister said the inquiry committee, headed by the Chairman of the Central Electricity Authority (CEA), Mr. R.N. Srivastava, will look into the cause of the collapse of the grid, identify ways and means of restoring the system immediately in such a situation.

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