India blackout continues, now over 600K without power
More than 10 states in north and east India faced power outages as the main electricity grids serving the regions collapsed again on Tuesday, leaving nearly half the country without power for a second day.
Sabarmati Thermal Power Station 2010 photo/Koshy Koshy
On Monday, the country’s worst black-out in a decade left more than 300 million people without electricity and brought trains, offices and hospitals to a standstill.
The region’s biggest power plants were online again by the middle of the day, but the effort was short-lived as an overload of capacity dragged down the eastern and north-eastern power grids in addition to the northern grid that was the first to be crippled.
Sushil Kumar Shinde, minister for power, told reporters the repeated failures were caused by state grids overdrawing power from the central grid.
Officials were struggling to regain control of the situation. This from the Economic Times:
Central Electricity Authority officials have said that the collapse of three grids is unprecedented. “May take over a day to recover. Three grids – Northern, North eastern, and eastern – have collapsed together. The grids will be restored seperately,” officials said.
According to the officials, hydro power plants will be started first. Thermal plants may take the longest to come back on stream. “The entire drill may take a complete day. Situation may be normal by Wednesday,” they added.
Geetanjali Harnal, a 24-year old white-collar worker in Delhi said she only heard of the fresh power cuts from TV news reports.
“Currently there’s no power cut in my office, or at least I’m not aware if we’re on back-up power,” she said. “There are no messages sent out by the government in this kind of situation. I’ve just been watching the news flashes on TV.”
Disruption also hit India’s expansive railways network and the Delhi metro was reportedly evacuated.
