Power collapse leaves west India in the dark


Mumbai, home of the Bombay Stock Exchange, was unaffected by the power outage despite being in Maharashtra

Staff and wires

NEW DELHI, India -- A power grid collapse in India on Tuesday night sent almost the entire western flank of the country into darkness.

The collapse affected five states and part of a sixth, with the exception of the city of Mumbai.

The government on Wednesday asked the Central Electricity Authority to launch an inquiry into the blackout.

Problems began at 7:45 p.m. local time on Tuesday, after the state of Madhya Pradesh started to draw more power than the system could handle.

Within half an hour the system had collapsed, leaving the whole of Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Chattisgarh, Goa and Maharashtra – except Mumbai – without power, as well as parts of Rajasthan.

As of 8 a.m. local time on Wednesday, most of those areas had power restored, but much of Maharashtra and Goa were still without power.

Severe disruptions

Passengers on the railway network suffered severe disruptions, with many trains left stranded on the Western and Central Railways.

Hospital emergency services in the city of Bhopal were also affected due to the failure.

And Bhilai, which houses a major steel plant, was also without power through the night.

The only signs of unrest came from the city of Ahmedabad, where reports say two crude bombs were set off near a place of worship.

The Economic Times newspaper reports that three people, including two policemen, suffered injuries after being pelted with stones.

State unrepentant over excess withdrawal

The chief minister of Madhya Pradesh denied that his state was responsible for the collapse, claiming that a June arrangement allowed his state to draw excess power.

Digvijay Singh told Star TV that the arrangement allowed either Madhya Pradesh or Chattisgarh to take an extra 450 megawatts if the other state was not taking its quota.

Officials from the state said the National Thermal Power Corp.'s (NTPC) thermal plants were to blame for the outage.

"There is nothing wrong with our plants," NTPC's chief, C. P. Jain, told the Press Trust of India.

"We were forced to shut down suddenly due to low frequency, for protection of the plants."

R. P. Singh, chairman of the Power Grid Corp., sided with Jain. He told PTI that the problem was due to the state persistently drawing more power than its allocation despite repeated warnings.