THE JULY 2012 INDIA BLACKOUT

It was the largest power outage in history, which occurred on 30 and 31 July 2012. It affected 620 million people, which is about 9% of the world population, half of our country's population. It was spread across 22 states in northern, eastern, and northeast India. It was estimated that 32 Giga watts of electricity was taken offline. An article in The Wall Street stated that 320 million people had power while the rest of the population lacked in access. So, the power was restored in affected areas between 31 July and 1st of August.

Background

India's electrical infrastructure was generally considered unreliable. The northern grid had collapsed in 2001. So, 27% of power was lost in transmission. While supply felt short of demand by 9%. This led to nation suffer from power outages that last as long as 10 hours. Then 300 million people had no electricity, which is about 25% of the population.

Late arrival of monsoons led to agricultural areas of Punjab and Haryana drew power from grid for running irrigation pumps.

30 July

The 400 KV Bina-Gwalior lines tripped, Agra-Bareilly transmission section also tripped. All major power stations were shut down in the affected states, causing shortage of 30 GW.

Power minister Sushil Kumar and Shinde stated that the exact cause of the failure was unknown, but at that time electricity was "above normal". He stated that some states utilised more than permitted due to the higher consumption. The spokesperson of PGCIL and NRLDC stated that Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh were the states responsible for overdraw. More than 300 million of people were without power. Railways and airports were shut down. Only the Delhi airport was open. Many Hospitals reported interruptions in health services. Water treatment plants were also shut down. Millions were unable to draw water from wells.

31 July

The system failed again due to problems near The Taj Mahal. The power stations across the affected parts of India again went offline. NTPC stopped 38% of its generating capacity. Then over 600 million people, 22 states out of 28 states, were without power.

More than 300 intercity passenger trains and commuter lines were shut down. The Delhi metro suspended services on all six lines. About 200 miners were trapped underground in eastern India due to lifts failing, but all were rescued.

The states which were affected by the grid failure –

States of northern grid- Delhi , Haryana , Himachal Pradesh , Jammu and Kashmir , Punjab , Rajasthan , Uttar Pradesh , Uttrakhand

States on the eastern grid: Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, West Bengal

States on the northeast grid: Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim

Regions, which were not affected at all, are: -

Narora and Simbhaoli in Uttar Pradesh

Parts of Delhi such as Badarpur

Areas served by Sterlite and LB thermal power station (most of western Orissa)

Most of the Kolkata municipal areas (CESC system)

Reactions

Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde ordered a three-member panel to determine the reason of failure report it in 15 days. He realized that India was not alone in suffering major power outages, as blackouts also occurred in United States and Brazil within the previous few years .

The Washington post described it as urgency to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's plan for a US$400 billion overhaul of India's power grid. He plans for 76 Gig watts of generation by 2017.

Rajiv Kumar, secretary general of FICCI stated that the major for the collapse of the power grid is major gap between demand and supply. There is an urgent need to reform the power sector and bring about infrastructural improvements to meet the new challenges.

Team Anna, charged that this grid failure was a conspiracy to supress the fast movement started on 25th July 2012 for the Jan Lokpal bill and targeting Sharad Pawar .

Investigation

The three-member investigation committee consisted of S. C. Srivastava, A. Velayutham and A. S. Bakshi, and issued its report on 16 August 2012. It concluded that four factors were responsible for the two days of blackout.

Inadequate response by State Load Despatch Centers (SLDCs) to the instructions of Regional Load Despatch Centres (RLDCs) to reduce overdrawal by the Northern Region utilities and underdrawal/excess generation by the Western Region utilities.

Loss of 400 kV Bina-Gwalior link due to mis-operation of its protection system.

The committee also offered a number of recommendations to prevent further failures, including an India is in a state of perennial energy shortage with a demand-supply gap of almost 12% of the total energy demand. This trend is significant in the electricity segment that is heavily dependent on coal and other non-renewable sources of energy. Renewable energy (RE) sources contribute only 7.7% of the total installed power capacity of 167,077 MW in India. Among the RE sources, wind power is the dominating component while solar energy currently contributes to less than 0.1% (on-grid+ off grid) of the total installed capacity.

 

                                                                                Pururav suhag

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