Sudden load drop leads to power outage in South Gujarat, North Maharashtra

Power outages for nearly four hours were reported in the districts of Surat, Bharuch, Navsari, Vapi and Valsad, disrupting the power supply of the Dakshin Gujarat Vij Company Limited (DGVCL) as well as Torrent Power in old city area of Surat. The authorities are probing the cause of the outage even as the power was restored later on Wednesday evening.

DGVCL MD Yogesh Chaudhary told the Indian Express “Around 2.50 pm on Wednesday, the power demand in South Gujarat was 5200 MW, it suddenly dropped to 700 MW, a similar thing happened in Western Maharashtra also. In DGVCL, around 4,000 MW power dip occurred and in Maharashtra around 5,000 MW. The reasons are unknown…Something happened in either Maharashtra or South Gujarat…”

Chaudhary said, “The heavy grid lines are interconnected across the country…the generation and consumption (of power) is done in real time and it is managed by the load despatch center so either there was some problem in some generation plant in some part of the country that is supplying power to this area or there was a issue in some high voltage transmission line somewhere…”

“Because of the sudden dip, seven 400 KV lines of South Gujarat, between Asoj and Kosamba tripped, which led to a shut down of the Ukai thermal power plant and Kakrapar generation plant. At that time, the voltage levels in the system dipped from 220 KV to 180 KV. To save the entire grid of this region (from collapsing), we had to shut down the substations for safety reasons and then the load dispatch center, from where transmission occurs, had to be switched on slowly so at that time the demand went to 700 MW. It went back to 2200 MW one-and-a-half hour after the restoration started around 5pm. It will be restored completely at the earliest.”

He further explained, “The entire country’s generation plants are connected to the grid and every state has inter-connection points also. And on the grid level voltage, in order to manage the frequency within permissible limits, if there is any fluctuation, the load dispatch centre has to keep some area isolated from the entire grid in order to save the grid from collapsing. So, since the voltage levels dipped below the permissible level and the frequency went above the permissible level, they immediately had to isolate the entire area… These events are like black swan events… they happen once in some years but when they happen, the primary aim is to save the grid… it has to be isolated otherwise the system would be unable to recover… if the big lines had fallen or the substations had blasted, then it would have taken days to recover and bring the frequency and voltage back to the normal range.” The DGVCL claimed that till evening, over 90 per cent of power cuts had been restored. Power cuts had been witnessed by over 37.37 lakh consumers in South Gujarat. The power outage had been witnessed in seven districts, 45 talukas, 23 cities and 3,461 villages in South Gujarat due to the Ukai Power Station shut down, as per sources in DGVCL.

Meanwhile, Gujarat Energy Transmission Corporation (GETCO) Managing Director Upendra Pande said in a video statement that a fault in the grid system in North Maharashtra and South Gujarat “led to the unexpected drop in voltage because of which the load could not be sustained”. He said, “Because of the 9000 MW load thrown off the grid, some lines and some power plants were impacted, Maharastra’s Tarapur, South Gujarat’s Ukai Kakrapar and SLPP got impacted and tripped,” he said.

Soon after the incident, the State Load Dispatch Centre (SLDC) started the restoration work on the system and according to Pande, the entire grid was back to normal before 7 pm Wednesday. Due to the power outage, a public uproar was witnessed at the head offices of DGVCL and Torrent Power company in Surat with people seeking explanations behind the sudden outage. The security staffers struggled to control the public anger. Here, it is to be noted that Torrent power supplies power to the significant wall city areas of Surat while DGVCL supplies power to other consumers, including industrial consumers. The textile and diamond factory owners also faced considerable losses due to the outage. These industries work on the power supply to process their products through different phases. Some industries also faced damage to their machinery and products.

Federation of Gujarat Weavers Association President Ashok Jirawala said, “The textile industry runs on different computer panels… for weaving different designs are made on the grey cloth on machines. The textile industry in Surat produces 6.5 crores meters, and due to the power outage for five hours, the industry faced a loss in production, and computer design panels went off. The total assessment of loss will be learnt on Thursday. We have started receiving calls from the industries.”

Surat Diamond Association President Jagdish Khunt said, “The industry faced a loss as panels in the machinery in the laser diamond cutting industry went off due to power outage. The exact loss is unknown as of now. We are collecting details from the stakeholders.”

Meanwhile, the railway network remained unaffected. According to Western Railway PRO Sunil Thakur , “There was a power outage, but we had a backup power supply. So, the trains incurred no major problems.”