Independent India on Tuesday faced its biggest power blackout, which is now being termed as the world’s biggest power outage ever in a day.
About 60 crore people in 19 states in the Northern, Eastern and North-eastern regions went powerless when the northern, eastern and north-eastern grids collapsed simultaneously.
This was the second grid collapse in as many days and the officials at the Power Grid Corporation and the Ministry of Power are completely clueless and unable to fathom the reasons for the grid collapse.
“Our team of officers are yet to pinpoint what led to the grid collapse,” R N Nayak, CMD of Power Grid Corporation of India, said.
He cited overdrawal and lack of grid discipline as the possible reasons.
Meanwhile, officials of the Power Grid Corporation said both the grids were wheeling about 24,549 MW of power till Tuesday evening and the total capacity of both the grids together is about 50,000 MW.
The grid collapse would also be remembered as a day when the present Power Minister Sushilkumar Shinde was elevated as the Home Minister, and Corporate Affairs Minister Veerappa Moily was assigned additional charge as the Power Minister.
Asked what was the remedy to prevent any such occurrences, Moily said: “Need to manage power better.
“Prolonged heat wave conditions across North India led to overdrawal of power by several states where sowing of kharif crops is on. We have asked all the states connected to the grid to maintain strict discipline,” Shinde said.
Expressing concern over the second consecutive power grid failure, the BJP slammed the govt for inaction and asserted “lack of management and a proper policy were responsible for the power breakdown”.
India Inc sought review of the functioning of the national power grid and called for reforms in the sector.
The collapse severely affected the functioning of the Indian Railways and about 300 trains were thrown off schedule.