Power scenario critical

Delay in the arrival of the monsoon and rise in the mercury level together with the onset of the sowing season are having an adverse impact on the power situation in North India, including Delhi.

The continued overdrawal of electricity by a number of power utilities in the region has brought the Northern Grid to the verge of collapse.

So much so that the Power Grid Corporation has declared a state of emergency at the Northern Regional Load Despatch Centre at Katwaria Sarai in South Delhi. Officials of the level of executive director have been stationed here on a rotation basis here since Thursday, when the grid frequency hovered dangerously around 49 Hz.

In an SOS to the Chief Secretaries of all the States, the Chairman and Managing Director of the Power Grid, R.P. Singh, is believed to have forewarned that the Northern Grid might collapse any time, plunging the region into darkness if they continued to break the grid discipline. In his letter dated July 1, Mr. Singh is understood to have warned the Chief Secretaries that the Power Grid would not hesitate in snapping their supply lines if they drew more power than allowed. Another similar message was faxed to the respective power utilities today. However, sources said there was not much improvement in the situation.

“It is a crisis like situation,” the official said. Under the new Availability Based Tariff (ABT) regime, hefty penalty would be imposed on all of them, he added.Highly placed sources in the Power Grid said the situation was grim mainly because of continuous overdrawal of electricity by States like Punjab, Rajasthan, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir.

Though the Delhi Transco on the other hand has been indulging in underdrawal of electricity from the grid, a grim power situation in the northern region has forced the discoms to resort to load-shedding due to a very low frequency in the system.

“This is also grid indiscipline, but by doing so, the Delhi Transco is helping the other States by making available more power,” the official said.

Knowledgeable sources in Power Grid said they met the highest ever demand of 24,000 MW on Thursday, but still they were several times on the brink of collapse.

The region, he said, was facing a massive shortfall of about 2,000 MW despite importing power from the eastern region (500 MW), western region (100-150 MW normally and up to 300 to 400 MW at times) and the north-eastern region (300-500 MW). The massive shortfall in the region is also due to outages of several generating units in the area amounting to as much as 3,000 MW. On Friday, one unit of 500 MW at Annapara also tripped worsening the crisis.

Attributing the overdrawal of electricity from the grid mainly to the sowing season, a rise in day temperature and absence of rainfall, officials said the large-scale grid indiscipline by the respective power utilities have endangered the entire transmission system.

“They have been overdrawing power despite the presence of ABT knowing very well that they would have to pay a hefty penalty. This means that this is being done deliberately by the respective power utilities, mainly to provide electricity to their farmers,” the official said.