North India may face power cut as 3 plants shut

New Delhi: Northern states, including New Delhi, could face power cuts as three hydro-power plants that together supply about 3,000 MW of electricity to the region have been shut down.

The 1,500 MW Nathpa Jhakri, 1,000 MW Karcham-Wangtoo and 300 MW Chamera II hydro-power projects have been shut temporarily due to high silt levels in water, sources said.

Electricity generated in these three hydro-power plants is fed to Northern Grid, that caters to 28 per cent of the country's population.

A Power Grid Corp official said there is shortfall of around 3,000 MW supply to the Northern Grid due to non generation by the three hydro projects.

According to him, supply shortage in the grid was noticed at around 10 am, when the demand was about 33,000 MW. However, the situation could not be termed as grid disturbance, he added. Meanwhile, an Uttar Pradesh government official said the state averted collapse of the Northern Grid at around 10 am.

The latest incident comes within three weeks of failure of Northern, Eastern and North Eastern grids on July 31 that led one of the world's biggest power outages.

The Northern Grid, that covers nine regions, itself had tripped for two consecutive days on July 30 and July 31.

When contacted, an official of SJVN, that operates the Nathpa Jhakri project, said the plant was shut today due to high silt content in water from Sutlej river.

"The plant has to be closed if the silt level in water goes up beyond the benchmark level... we are closely analysing the situation and expect to restart the plant tomorrow (Tuesday) morning," Nathpa Jhakri's Executive Director RK Bansal said.

Officials of Jaiprakash Power Ventures, that operates Karcham-Wangtoo plant, and NHPC, which runs Chamera II project, could not be immediately contacted.

Meanwhile, the Uttar Pradesh government said the state has averted the failure of the Northern Grid as electricity supplies were timely cut to certain districts.

"We timely succeeded in averting grid failure by cutting power supply to some districts," Principal Secretary Energy AK Gupta told reporters in Lucknow.

The Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Ltd (UPPCL) averted the failure this morning at around 1000 hrs, when the grid frequency dropped to around 48.8, he said.

The frequency -- generally referred to as the intensity at which electricity is supplied -- is to be normally in the range of 49.7 to 50.2.

According to Gupta, the incident took place even as Uttar Pradesh was under-drawing 588 MW electricity. He said the situation developed probably due to shut down of three power plants in Himachal Pradesh that resulted in supply shortage of around 3,000 MW.

Northern grid covers Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir and Chandigarh. The Northern Regional Load Despatch Centre (NRLDC), part of state-run Power Grid, monitors the grid.

India has five electricity grids -- Northern, Eastern, North Eastern, Southern and Western. All of them are inter-connected, except the Southern grid.