Mumbai goes power-less; normal supply likely by tonight

Large parts of the financial capital were hit by a massive electricity failure this morning as a generating unit of Tata Power Company (TPC) tripped and no relief is likely for consumers before late tonight.
Parts of South and Central Mumbai, including business districts, faced outage from 9.45 am due to the tripping of unit 5 of the 500-mw Tata Power plant at Trombay near here due to technical glitches, which forced the private utility to switch off several feeders.
"Partial load has been restored through hydro stations and the company has activated the initialisation activities of its cold standby unit 6 which runs on oil. Units are expected to be fully restored and power is expected to be normalised fully by late night today," a TPC statement said this evening.

The tripping resulted in load reduction in Parel, Mahalaxmi, Dharavi, Chembur and Grant Road areas of South Mumbai. This impacted controlling loading on the 220Kv Kharghar-Nerul-Sonkar-Trombay tie line which supplies power to the island city.
"Though power is available elsewhere in the state, due to the overloading of state transmission network, it has not been made possible to import power for the city by these distribution companies. The distribution companies are now doing a rotational load-shedding in their respective areas of about 200-300 MW," the statement said.
State-run utility BEST, which primarily supplies power to the affected parts, had to impose rotational load-shedding in Dadar, Mahim, Dharavi, Sion, Prabhadevi, Parel, Sewree, Byculla, Chinchpokli, Girgaon, Mumbai Central and parts of Flora Fountain, Ballard Pier and Nariman Point, among others.

"It was informed by Tata Power that unit 5 will be switched on by 2.30 pm. However, they have failed to do so and it is not expected to be restored fully by evening. We are making utmost efforts to try and get power from other sources," Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) said in a statement.

BEST said it has taken steps to ensure that important hospitals, including KEM, JJ, Hinduja, Sion Hospital, Bombay Hospital, Breach Candy, Jaslok and Nair Hospital are spared from load-shedding so that they get uninterrupted supply.
It has also appealed to Ganpati mandals to use minimum lighting in the evening and make alternate arrangements.

Meanwhile, a spokesperson of Reliance Infrastructure, which supplies power in the western suburbs, said "due to the issues at Tata Power's unit 5 and the resultant constraints on transmission system, replacement power could not be brought to the city.