India in worst-ever blackout as power grids fail

India experienced what was dubbed as its biggest ever power failure leaving half of the country oraround 600 million people without electricity supply.

This affected hundreds of trains and lakhs of households and establishments as the grid that connects generating stations with customers collapsed for the second time in two days, highlighting the precarious state of the power sector in the country.

So far 80 percent of power supply had been restored in the national capital of Delhi by 7:00 PM.

Outgoing Power Minister Sushilkumar Shinde said that power supply has been restored fully in the North-East and it will take a few more hours to resume supplies in other parts of country hit by the outages.

While the northern grid failed for the second straight day, the eastern and north-eastern grids too collapsed. These three grids carry about 50,000 MW of electricity.

About 22 states and union territories have been impacted by the failure of the three grids.

The northern grid covers nine regions - Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, J&K and Chandigarh.

At least six states are covered by the eastern grid. They are West Bengal, Chattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa and Sikkim.

Meanwhile, the north eastern grid connects Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram and Tripura.

India has five electricity grids - Northern, Eastern, North Eastern, Southern and Western. All of them are inter- connected, except the Southern grid.

All the grids are being run by the state-owned Power Grid Corporation, which operates more than 95,000 circuit km of transmission lines.

The collapse of the northern grid, the worst in a decade, was triggered by violation of discipline by states, which drew excessive power, which some officials said was due to political pressures.

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