Heavy smog in parts of north India, including Delhi, caused a major failure of the northern power grid for several hours on Friday morning.
NEW DELHI: Heavy smog in parts of north India, including Delhi, caused a major failure of the northern power grid for several hours on Friday morning.
The major outage, which took place around 3 am, affected New Delhi, western Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab and parts of J&K and also disrupted train services in the area. About 50 transmission lines in these regions had tripped.
“Electricity transmission grid tripped due to heavy smog. Tripping of the grid during winters is common, but this year the winter has been unusually long. The fog coupled with heavy pollution resulted in deposition of pollution particles on transmission lines which caused the tripping,” said RP Singh, managing director, Power Corporation of India Ltd (PGCIL). Senior officials at the PGCIL said that the problem had been aggravating in recent times. “Deposition of particles on insulators due to smog causes blackout. This phenomenon is common in winters but the situation is getting worse,” an
official said.
Train services were also badly affected, especially in Delhi and surrounding areas and only diesel-operated trains were functional. The worst-affected sections were the Ferozabad-Dadri and Tughlakabad-Palwal lines, where supply was disrupted for several hours. “The blackouts halted movement of trains around the capital. Nearly 25 trains were delayed, including Rajdhani and Shatabdi trains,” said Rajiv Saxena, spokesperson, Northern Railways.
“The problem began at 2 am with intermittent power failure reported from the northern grid. But by 6.30 am, the crisis worsened and most Delhi-bound Rajdhani trains were delayed by several hours. The trains that left Delhi were stranded en route,” Saxena added. Some trains had to be diverted. The National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), India’s biggest power producer, was forced to halt operations at its two plants in Dadri (UP) and Faridabad.
Power was initially restored at 9 am but some lines tripped again. Normalcy was restored at about 10.30 am. Train services also crawled back to normalcy after a halt of over six hours.
y_puneet@dnaindia.net
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