City goes without power once again

By Our Staff Reporter

CHENNAI, MAY 30. Close on the heels of total blackout last night, several city areas were plunged into darkness for a major part of Tuesday due to yet another tripping.

One of the auto transformers at Sriperumbudur developed `trouble' at around 12.15 p.m., according to TNEB officials. As other power stations were working `satisfactorily,' the problem was sorted out by evening, they said.

The power failure, however, brought the Railways to a grinding halt including reservations, which developed `snags' due to `frequent power breakdown.'

A TNEB press release said that supply was restored in phases. By 4.30 p.m., normal supply was restored. But many residents from several parts of the city and the suburbs had no relief from the sweltering heat. Residents of K.K. Nagar, Ashok Nagar, T.Nagar and `large' parts of West Mambalam said that power went off around 5.30 p.m. once again and did not return till late in the night.

A grid disturbance, due to overdrawal of power by Karnataka, was blamed for Monday night's power failure all over the State but today the problem was restricted to the city and its suburbs due to `tripping' at the GMR Vasavi and North Chennai power stations.

While the TNEB officials said that last night's power failure was rectified in stages by Tuesday evening, residents in Virugambakkam complained that power supply was yet to be restored in their areas till late on Tuesday. At another end of the city, some residents of Kottivakkam had a different experience: they said that there was no power blackout in their residences today.

Meanwhile, the TNEB technicians started analysing the reasons for the recurring grid and localised problems and found solutions to `protect' supply within the State. Some of the frequent disruptions in power supply have been attributed to the lack of `grid discipline' by two of the southern grid partners - Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.

The technical committee consisting senior EB officials including the Member (distribution), Member (generation) and the CE (operations) has been asked to study how to avoid such disruptions in future. It has also been authorised to seek a competent academic opinion in this regard.

A similar committee said, some nine months ago, that they had got to the root of the problem and set it right. ``We were able to isolate and deal with some of the technical problems then. That is why we have had a relatively problem-free power supply for some time now,'' an official said. ``But of course, there is not much we can do when a huge grid failure occurs,' a senior official said.

Last December, for instance, in a major disruption, the entire State went without power supply for nearly an hour on a Sunday morning following tripping in all thermal and hydel power stations.

The immediate cause for this was attributed to problems in the southern regional electricity grid due to the disruption in the functioning of the Nagarjuna Sagar-Raichur and Sriperumbudur- Cuddappah transmission lines. The neighbouring Karnataka too suffered breakdown in power supply.

On all these occasions, when there were `grid problems,' the power generation network in Tamil Nadu automatically split into different regions (islanding).

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Southern States
Previous : Training programme for councillors
Next     : A park in bad shape