CEA blames Powergrid for grid collapse

Interesting, however, while the CEA has blamed Powergrid for not maintaing grid discipline, it has said remarkably little on Powergrid’s lack of powers to enforce this discipline. As this paper had earlier reported on January 5 that while Powergrid was responsible for the grid failure, the major power gernerating stations along the grid failed to comply with the instruction of Northern Regional Load Despatch Centre (NRLDC) (a division of Powergrid). On the morning of January 2 the NRLDC had instructed NTPC’s Singrauli power statioin to back down its production to 1320 MWs and had asked the UP Government’s Anpara to cut down production by 400 MWs. Singrauli however continued production at 1500 MWs while Anpara cut production by only 150 MWs. Understandly then, Powergrid was unable to keep the grid frequency under control.

On the punitive action to be taken against any agency responsible for the failure, Prabhu said "we are referring the matter to CEA to decide at the eraliest." He, however, did not specify any time frame for CEA to give its recommendations on the above matter.

Meanwhile, systemic action would be taken against the responsible agencies, both in centre and states, to avoid such occurances in the future, Prabhu said.

CEA report also confirmed that fault in the 250 mw Panki power station in UP, which led to total breakdown of the grid affecting normal life in all the eight states of the region including Delhi.

Srivastava recommended mechanism for proper coordination among generation, transmission and load despatch centres to avoid such kind of disasters. Proper and timely instructions should be sent in the event of uneven frequency in power lines to prevent their tripping, the Committee said and pointed out that obsolete power equipment need to be replaced immediately.

Meanwhile, the power minister has asked the chief ministers to review the functioning of State Electricity Boards (SEBs) to ensure that drawals of power from the grids did not exceed the scheduled power supply according to grid code. Prabhu also launched a special drive under which he would be visiting all the power grids to ensure that they maintain discipline as per the grid code.

According to Powergrid sources, the present Acts do not allow Powergrid to take any punitive action against the SEBs. "At best we can scold the SEBs and talk to them and cajole them. There is no process of punitive action", sources added.