Title - Power supply hit in Haryana, Chandigarh as northern grid trips

Chandigarh: Power supply in Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh was hit due to collapse of the northern grid which also affected water supply and running of trains.The northern grid collapsed at around 2:30 AM this morning, hitting power supply in northern states, including Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh (Union Territory) and Jammu and Kashmir.Even as power utilities of both states are trying to restore power, they say it may take 4-5 hours to bring power plants back into generation."Power supply has been adversely affected in entire Punjab due to failure of northern grid at around 2:30 AM… We are trying to restore the power," Punjab State Power Corporation Limited, Director (Distribution) Arun Verma said.He said it might take at least 4-5 hours to restore the power supply in entire Punjab.Acknowledging the power failure in the entire state, Haryana's Special Secretary of Power, Tarun Bajaj said, "Though the efforts are on to restore the power supply, it may take few hours to bring situation to normalcy. Every unit takes time to restart".As a fallout of power failure, people in both states and the UT faced tough time as there was no supply of drinking water in the morning.Train passengers also had a tough time with several trains getting disrupted in Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh.

A number of passenger trains bound for Delhi and beyond, Chandigarh, Amritsar, Jammu, Ferozepur and Kalka were stranded at various stations due to failure of electricity, a senior railway officer said.

The officer said efforts were on to move the passenger trains with diesel engines after detaching them from running goods trains which would remain halted at way side railway station.

Kalka Chandigarh Delhi Shatabdi Express left the local station 90 minutes behind scheduled departure of 6.53 AM after a diesel engine was attached to it.

The trains affected include Amritsar-Delhi-Shatabdi Express, Allahabad-Chandigarh Unchahaar, Lucknow-Chandigarh- Sadbhavna, Howraha-Kalka Mail, Delhi-Jammu Mail and a number of other super fast, express, passenger and local trains. Meanwhile, Bhakra Beas Management Board, which supplies 140 lakh units of power to partnering states, including Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan, has started power generation.

"BBMB has started power generation a few minutes ago and we will be going to give power to Mohali and Chandigarh," Verma said.

Power has been restored in Chandigarh and its surrounding areas.

Haryana has also been able to restart its gas-based power plant in Faridabad of 432 MW.

"Our Faridabad based plant has started generating power and afterwards coal fired plants will be restarted," said Bajaj.

Even as power utilities of both states tried to restart their power generating units, power plants are getting tripped because of low voltage and low frequency.

Bathinda and Ropar power plants tripped twice when efforts were made to restart them, he said.

"Our power plants are getting tripped because of low frequency. We even started supplying 50 MW of power in Amritsar but it also tripped," he said.