Mumbai: Train services came to a halt, homes and businesses were without electricity and people sweltered in humid heat as a grid failure resulted in massive power outages across this city Monday morning.
As the day progressed, power restoration efforts began on ‘war footing’. Trains have started to resume operations, beginning with CR’s ‘Harbour Line’. The trains are carrying only essential services workers at present, which helped minimise the passenger inconvenience.
Railway services across city on the Western Railway and Central Railway lines came to a grinding halt at 10.05am as a result of the power outage. Both the networks blaming power cut from Tata Power (their power supplier) for it.
Maharashtra Power Minister Nitin Raut said the trouble emanated from Maharashtra State Electricity Transmission Company (MSETCL) facilities during a planned maintenance work.
Tata Power, which is into both generation and distribution, attributed the power outage to a simultaneous substation tripping at 10.10am at state-run transmission company MSETCL’s two substations in the suburbs of Kalwa and Kharghar.
Raut said power supply will resume soon, as officials were working on it on a war footing. As the afternoon progressed, power at many pockets including the Bandra Kurla Complex business district, Lower Parel and South Mumbai started resuming.
With work-from-home (WFH) becoming the norm across vital industries like banking, finance and information technology, employee output was also impacted. This is because residences do not have electricity backup in a city which generally has stable power.
In some instances, the snapping of power came at the most unfortunate moment. It resulted in incidents like employees in an upscale business complex getting stuck in the elevator in the times of social distancing. After a few difficult minutes, the employees were safely evacuated, as per a video doing rounds on social media.
The number of COVID-19 infections still is very high in this city. Many patients are currently recovering in hospitals including specially-created facilities rendering services like oxygen supply. Municipal Commissioner of Mumbai IS Chahal instructed staff to bolster diesel supply to last up to eight hours. He also asked them to scout for mobile diesel generator vans which are used at film shoots as a standby.
Raut said maintenance work was on in MSETCL’s 400 kv Kalwa-Padgha line when the technical fault happened in circuit number 2. It was was taking the entire load at the time as circuit 1 was shut.
MSETCL is responsible for getting power till the Kalwa substation from generating stations across Maharashtra. Then the power is distributed to the consumers by companies like Tata Power and Adani Electricity.
“Restoration work in is in progress to bring supply from the three hydro units and Trombay units once the MSETCL transmission lines are connected,” the Tata Power statement said.
Another official also said that it is a grid failure, and efforts are underway to restore power supply at the earliest with the help of MSETCL.
Power outages were reported from suburbs like Thane, Panvel, Dombivili and Kalyan as well.
BSE and NSE, the benchmark stock exchanges, which are based in the city, also reported power outages. However, they added that their operations were continuing normally.