India Faces Worst Power Outage in Nation's History

---

Researched by Industrial Info Resources India (New Delhi, India)--India has been facing a severe power outage for the past two days as the country's major grids collapsed, leaving more than 600 million people without electricity. This is the biggest incident of grid-failure in the county's history. In 2001, a fault in the northern grid left the northern Indian states powerless for hours. Three power grids connecting the north, east and northeastern states, as well as the national capital Delhi, collapsed in the afternoon of Tuesday, July 31, triggering a major power crisis in the country.

Twenty-two Indian states and union territories have been affected by the grid failure, which is considered to be one of the world's biggest blackouts. India has five electricity grids (Northern, Eastern, North Eastern, Southern and Western), and all of them are interlinked except the Southern grid.

While the eastern and northeastern grids collapsed for the first time in recent memory, the Northern grid tripped for the second consecutive day. These three grids have about 50,000 megawatts of power in total. The Northern grid had earlier collapsed on Monday, rendering nine northern states powerless for up to 10 hours.

"The grid incident occurred at 1300 hours [on Tuesday], affecting the Northern grid, Eastern grid and Northeastern grid--system under restoration," said India's National Load Despatch Centre (NLDC) (New Delhi, India) in an update.

The Northern grid transmits power in nine states: Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir and Chandigarh, while the Eastern grid caters to states such as West Bengal, Chattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa and Sikkim. The Northeastern grid connects Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram and Tripura. All the grids are being run by state-owned Power Grid Corporation of India Limited (BSE:532898) (Gurgaon, Haryana), which owns and operates more than 95,000 circuit kilometers of transmission network.

This unprecedented failure has left more than half of the country powerless. Essential services and public transport systems, including railways and the Delhi Metro, were affected by the grid collapse. The power crisis led to an immediate shutdown of Delhi Metro Train services in the national capital. A host of other services, including Indian Railway's countrywide service, were affected. More than 300 trains operated by Indian Railway came to a halt at various places due to the grid failure.

Three northern states are being blamed for the outage by overdrawing power. India's Power Ministry has announced that a three-member team will probe the cause of the crash and report within 15 days, following the first crash on Monday.

Power supplies from coal, gas and hydropower power plants, including 14 plants belonging to India's power major NTPC Limited (BSE:532555) (New Delhi, India), have been disrupted due to the grid instability. The major NTPC-owned power plants that fall in these regions are Rihand, Farakka, Kahalgaon, Talcher, Korba, Sipat, Tanda, Vindhyachal, Singrauli, Unchahar Badarpur, National Capital Power Station and the gas-based power stations at Auraiya, Faridabad and Dadri.

View Plant Profile - 1055308 1085425 1049531 1038121 1085453 1039231 1055409 1057702 1044092 1085390 1042778 1055253 1057238 3018623

Industrial Info Resources (IIR), with global headquarters in Sugar Land, Texas, and eight offices outside of North America, is the leading provider of global market intelligence specializing in the industrial process, heavy manufacturing and energy markets. Industrial Info's quality-assurance philosophy, the Living Forward Reporting Principle™, provides up-to-the-minute intelligence on what's happening now, while constantly keeping track of future opportunities.