Power disruption brings Mumbai to standstill
MUMBAI: In a second major outage since 2020, Mumbai faced an hour-long power disruption on Sunday as planned outages for linear infrastructure projects and a fire on a hillock at Trombay affected electricity transmission. The Maharashtra government ordered a highlevel probe into the power failure.
While the impact on commercial and financial sectors was minimal as most establishments were closed on the weekend, the partial outage briefly disrupted suburban train services.
In a statement, Tata Power Company (TPC) said that power supply in south Mumbai, Chembur, Bandra, and Santacruz was affected on Sunday morning due to the tripping of the Maharashtra State Electricity Transmission Company Limited (MSETCL) line at its Trombay receiving station that connects to Tata Power transmission system.
“This resulted in the tripping of Trombay generation and cascade tripping of some internal lines affecting 850-MW load of all discoms,” it added.
“We restored the power supply within one hour; stepped up our hydro generation to full capacity; and avoided much larger damage. Detailed investigation is on...” said Sanjay Banga, president (T&D), Tata Power.
At 9.48 am, when the outage occurred, Mumbai was being supplied 2,083 MW electricity by the Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) undertaking, which caters to the island city, TPC, which largely covers bulk consumers, and Adani Electricity Mumbai Limited (AEML) for the suburbs. After the outage, the power supply dwindled to just 1,077 MW at 9.50 am. On October 12, 2020, Mumbai had come to a halt for a few hours due to a massive outage. It took up to 24 hours for the power supply to be restored in some areas. Mumbai has a generating capacity of 1,877 MW, including 500 MW with AEML and TPC’S 1,377 MW. Energy minister Nitin Raut on Sunday ordered a high-level inquiry. “A serious note has been taken and orders for a high-level probe have been given. Necessary action will be taken against those found guilty,” he said.
Nearly 62 BEST substations were affected and senior officials from the MSETCL said most areas in the island city and central Mumbai like Fort, Kalbadevi, Bhuleshwar, Sion, Cumballa Hills, and Cuffe Parade were severely hit.
“The power grid in the main transmission line was restored in an hour following which our team of technicians made local site visits to restore the internal faults that were caused,” said a senior BEST official.
An AEML spokesperson said, “Adani Electricity consumers were largely unaffected... as we were able to ramp up our generation at Dahanu. This helped the early restoration for consumers in south Mumbai as well.”