28 hours is what it took for a complete restoration of power in Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) after power outage on Monday. Power supply was completely restored by the MSEDCL only by Tuesday afternoon. A probe was ordered which began its work on Tuesday, with committee constituted by the CEA. They will study the cause of outage and find solutions to prevent such a situation in future.
Energy minister Nitin Raut on Monday evening had said MSEDCL areas did not receive power supply as around 500 MW of the Tata Power plant was not in sync with the system. He later tweeted, “Tata’s generation started and picking up. I am personally monitoring the situation.” A Tata official said, “MSETCLs 400kV Pune-Kalwa line has been under forced shutdown since Sunday. It is understood that MSETCL had taken emergency shutdown for the 400kV Kalwa-Padghe line 1 at 6.54 am on Monday morning to attend to the fault and was expected to be revived by 9.30am, but could not revive it.”
At 9.58am, the 400kV Kalwa-Padghe line 2, carrying 633 MW, tripped. The flow on Pune-Kharghar rose up to 900MW and tripped at 10am, resulting in load drop in the Mumbai system. Mumbai’s islanding system that saves the city from major power outages was separated, but could not hold as an additional 900MW load dropped at 10.05 am. Tata Power swiftly began restoration work to bring back supply from the 3 hydro units and Trombay gas and coal units as soon as the MSETCL transmission lines were connected from Monday afternoon. The Kalwa-Talegaon grid is still being repaired. However, it will take a day, but the load is “normal” on the other grids.
