BENGALURU: Power line faults on Sunday afternoon left almost half the city without power and disrupted Metro services for about an hour.
The faults occurred on two lines drawn from the 400 kV Nelamangala station to the 220 kV Peenya and Hebbal substations.
The outage spoilt a lazy Sunday afternoon for several people in the affected areas. “I had invited friends over for the day to watch movies. We finally had to shift to another friend’s house where there was back-up power. Power was finally restored at 8.30 pm,” said Kaushik Chatterjee, a data analyst who lives in Sanjaynagar. Anbazhagan T, a software developer in Hebbal, said, “We have been facing regular power cuts for several years now and have bought a back-up system. However, on Sunday, the power was out for so long that even our inverter switched off after an hour.”
According to officials, several parts in north and west and some parts in east Bengaluru did not have power from 2.48 pm after a flashover on lightning arresters on lines between Nelamangala and Peenya as well as Nelamangala and Hebbal.
“The flashover on the lightning arresters damaged a potential transformer, which led to a series of outages. We expect to restore complete functionality by 8.30 pm,” a Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation official told Express in the evening. Potential transformers are used to step down the voltage from 400 to 220 kV for further distribution to substations.
BESCOM said around 400 MW of load was affected. Power supply to Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation (BMRL), Peenya, Rajajinagar, Mathikere, AR Circle and RMV Layout was restored by 5.40 pm. By 9 pm, power had been restored to all areas, it said.
The metro service was disrupted on the line between Sampige Road and Peenya Industry from 2.48 pm to 3.58 pm. Around 48 passengers in a train which had left Yeshwantpur towards Peenya were stuck around 20 metres away from the platform. They were evacuated from the train after 20 minutes. Four other trains were at platforms when the power went off.
As many as 749 token users and 114 smart card users were refunded, BMRL said.