Black Out
Yet another major grid failure serves as a reminder of how deep-rooted the rot in India's power sector is
By
Rohit Saran and Sayantan Chakravarty
Waking up with no power or going without it for an hour or two is no big deal in India, least of all in Delhi. But January 2, 2001 was different. At 4:44 a.m. that day eight north Indian states descended into a darkness that stretched 10 hours and more, blacking out streets, halting over 20 trains, grinding 24 major industries to a halt, blowing away more than Rs 700 crore in losses to industry and governments and eating away 15,500 MW of power. Unprecedentedly, the Rashtrapati Bhavan and the prime minister's residence were also rendered powerless for 30 minutes.
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| Most power plants lack maintenance and renovation |
What is not unprecedented is the scale of such breakdowns. Stretch your memory: January 1, 1997 had greeted northern India with a similar chill. Only, the power grid had collapsed twice in three days, on January 1 and 3. More recently, the eastern power grid failed in July last year. At least one region of the country receives a major power jolt every year (see box).
By now even the reasons have begun to sound familiar. A region or a state draws more or less power than it should; the system cannot handle such fluctuations; it shuts down; an inquiry is ordered; a report is submitted. The end. No compliance. Quips D.P. Sinha, member, Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC), who earlier as member, transmission, with CERC, had headed several inquiries: "We have gone through this so many times without learning any lessons."
For the uninitiated, "grid" is a loose term for a network of transmission lines of varying voltage capacities. India doesn't have a nationwide grid yet that can transport power from one part of the country to the other quickly and efficiently. Instead, there are five grids-northern, western, southern, eastern and north-eastern-which are loosely connected and operated by the Power Grid Corporation (PGC). A grid collapses, or the transmission stops, if one of the three happens: equipment fails, there's a sudden rise or fall in power load or due to a natural calamity.