Mumbai: A committee constituted by the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) will hold a maiden meeting here in Mumbai on Tuesday noon to probe the grid disturbance which occurred in Mumbai and the adjoining areas on October 12.
The committee will be chaired by CEA’s Chief Engineer (Power System Planning and Appraisal) and it will be attended by the representatives of the Western Region Power Centre, Power System Operation Corporation (Posoco), Maharashtra State Electricity Transmission Company, and the State Load Dispatch Centre (SLDC).
Power Ministry sources told Free Press Journal, “The CEA committee will look into whether the grid failure was because of technical flaws in the system or due to manual error or due to malfunction. It will also look into how three transmission lines including Kalwa-Talegaon, Kalwa-Padgha, and Kalwa-Kharghar tripped and why the Mumbai’s islanding scheme failed. Although, Tata Power and Adani Electricity operated islanding facilities, why Mumbai’s inbuilt generation did not sustain after tripping of three lines.” The committee will also assess efforts made by the power utilities to strengthen the power evacuation and transmission as recommended by a number of committees and directed by the Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission.
The committee will also assess the shortcoming in the evacuation and transmission system in Mumbai considering the rising power demand. After deliberations and field visit the committee will make its recommendations.
The constitution of the committee was done on Monday after the announcement was made by the Union Power Minister RK Singh. The minister had also said that the committee will visit the city to find out the cause of the outage and to find out possible solutions against such a breakdown.
Singh had said that while the national grid was operating smoothly, the problem happened in some parts of the Maharashtra grid.
As reported by Free Press Journal, the Posoco and Western Regional Load Dispatch Centre in its flash report said, “The 400 kV Kalwa-Padgha line 2 was tripped at 9.58 am due to R-phase fault on Monday as intimated by SLDC Kalwa. At 10 am 400kV Klawa Kharghar line, which was 500mw also got tripped due to conductor snap near Kharghar. Subsequently, Kharghar ICT 1 and 2 also tripped at 10.05 am due to this Kalwa, and Kharghar stations were dead. The expected Mumbai load loss was 2,600 mw.”
The restoration of power started in phases from 12.30 pm while in parts of Thane, Mulund and Navi Mumbai the full restoration took place by midnight.
