Mumbai hit by power outages
Parts of the city faced power cuts for several hours after a 500MW coal-fired unit belonging to Tata Power tripped
Mumbai: Mumbai’s pride at having unbroken power supply was severely dented on Tuesday, as a technical fault at Tata Power Co. Ltd’s Trombay plant sparked outages in several parts of the city for many hours.
At around 9.45am, a 500 megawatt (MW) coal-fired unit at the Trombay plant in the city’s outskirts developed a snag, compounded by the fact that a 250 MW unit at the same plant was already down for routine maintenance.
Tata Power said in a statement that supply has been partially restored by increasing generation from its hydro units. It said the situation was expected to return to normal late in the night.
However, a claim by Tata Power that it “activated the initialisation activities of its cold standby Unit 6 which runs on oil and was kept on cold with the consent of the procurers," drew ire from distributor Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST), which buys from the Trombay plant. BEST distributes power in the island city of Mumbai between Colaba and Nariman Point in south to Mahim and Sion in North.
“Tata Power’s statement is highly mischievous and misleading," said O.P. Gupta, general manager of BEST. Consumers of BEST, he said, pay an additional 100 crore to Tata Power for bringing power to the city in such eventualities. “So, if BEST can’t operate its generation units optimally or bring extra power in time of crisis, how it can be our fault," Gupta asked.
While power produced using coal costs 2-4 per unit, using liquid fuel such as furnace oil, diesel and naphtha costs 12-14 per unit.
The Tata Power statement also pointed to constraints in the state transmission corridor for its inability to bring power from outside. “Power was available in neighbouring areas of Maharashtra; however, due to overloading of the state transmission network, it has not been made possible to import power for Mumbai," the statement said.
Officials of the state government-owned power transmission company, Maharashtra Transmission Company Ltd (Mahatransco) and state energy department did not respond to phone calls and text messages.
Ashok Pendse, power sector analyst and designated consumer representative with the Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission, said, “Unless the transmission network connecting city with the state grid is strengthened, which enables bringing of extra power in the city during such hours of crisis, we will continue to face similar situations, whenever a technical snag develops at the generating station."
Meanwhile, a few areas of suburban Mumbai mostly served by Reliance Infrastructure Ltd had to suffer the cascading effects of the crisis in the city. The company had to resort to rotating load shedding in its distribution areas spread between Bandra and Bhyander the western suburbs and Kurla and Mankhurd in the eastern suburbs.
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