Title - Power outage across state as eastern grid collapses

There was a total breakdown of power in most parts of West Bengal following collapse of the eastern grid early on Tuesday afternoon. Kolkata city, Howrah town, parts of North 24 Parganas, South 24 Parganas and Hooghly, which get power from CESC were not affected much. But the power outage was total in rest of the state which gets power supply from West Bengal State Electricity Distribution Company Limited (WBSEDCL), Durgapur Projects Limited (DPL) and DPSC. The CESC managed to escape from this collapse as it isolated its system from the grid. The power breakdown was so massive and all-pervasive that state government declared early holiday for government employees. The state government said that total normalcy would not return before 1 am on Wednesday. Expressing concern over the situation, chief minister Mamata Banerjee said: “All of you know about the northern grid failure for two days. It is a cascading effect of that problem. A calamity has taken place. Except CESC areas, there is no electricity in the rest of the state. Restoration of normal power supply will take 10-12 hours’ time. The situation is serious and not in the state’s hand. This is New Delhi’s responsibility. It is 3.10 pm and the government employees are free to leave now for the day.” State power minister Manish Gupta also blamed the Centre for the grid collapse. “Grid management is the Centre’s responsibility. Grid discipline, protocol is overseen by the Centre. We pay around `300 crore annually for using the grid. The Union power minister should launch a thorough probe for all these grid failures,” he said, while adding that the state had suffered from such a grid failure last time in 2000. According to the state power department sources, the northern, eastern and north-eastern grids collapsed at around 1.02 pm, affecting power supply in 19 states, including West Bengal. All the power generating stations of the West Bengal Power Development Corporation Limited (WBPDCL) stopped generation immediately as they are connected to the grid. Over 100 trains of the Eastern Railways were stalled due to unavailability of power in overhead wires. The Kolkata Metro Railway service, however, was not affected as the CESC supply was normal. “In the mid-90s, we had installed isolators at our import points to tackle any such grid failure. These isolators today isolated our system at our import points at Belur, Howrah, Kasba, Titagarh and Rishra when the grid failure happened and so all our generating stations were operating normal. However, there was a shortfall of around 600 MW in the evening in our system as we could not import power from the WBSEDCL, resulting which power cuts did happen in our areas too,” a senior CESC official said. Meanwhile, in the evening, three units of WBPDCL resumed generation and the others were expected to start generation one after another. State power department officials expect that partial restoration will take place by 9 pm on Tuesday and full restoration by 1 am.