Mumbai, Sep 3 (TNN): Power outages hit large parts of Mumbai on Tuesday following a technical snag at Tata Power's plant in Trombay, affecting thousands of homes besides small and medium businesses.
Unprecedented in recent memory, the cuts began at 9.45am when the power station's unit 5, with a generation capacity of 500MW, tripped, forcing Tata Power to switch off power. This caused a domino effect. Consumers of the state-run BEST, which draws its entire supply from Tata Power, in the island city were plunged into darkness. And RInfra, whose distribution system is linked with Tata Power's transmission system, was driven to initiate rotational load-shedding in its areas in the western suburbs.
According to conservative estimates, around 2-3 lakh consumers in over two dozen pockets were hit by the outages that lasted nearly the whole day. Both BEST and RInfra claimed that electricity around the city was restored by 10pm, but some areas reported erratic supply till much later.
From homes to offices and hospitals to courts, the outage brought work to a near-standstill. Many living in highrises said they were holed up in their homes as lifts were not functioning. Others sweated patiently or swore irritably in the unrelieved humidity. Services at nursing homes and medium-sized hospitals were badly hit.
"Dark office in Mumbai. Lights out in the whole area. The coal crisis is beginning to literally show its dark side. A threat to the India story," tweeted Anand Mahindra, CMD of Mahindra Group.
Tata Power said that overloading of the state transmission network precluded distribution companies from importing power from elsewhere in India. Tuesday's glitch forced it to restart unit 6, which had been shut down for modernization. BEST said it has now made a standby arrangement to procure 385MW of renewable energy apart from 255MW from MSEDCL, the power distribution company, at Rs 9 crore a month.
"The power cuts were big," complained former BEST committee member Ravi Raja. "Thousands of citizens were inconvenienced in my area of Sion alone."
In Parel and Lower Parel, offices switched to backup generators. But elsewhere, business was noticeably affected, including in malls. In markets across different neighbourhoods, shops fell back on candles.
The statement issued by Tata Power in the evening said: "Tripping of unit 5 was due to a technical hurdle and restoration work is under progress. Partial load has been restored through the hydro stations and the company has activated the initialisation activities of its cold standby unit 6 — which runs on oil. Power is available in neighbouring areas of Maharashtra. But due to overloading of state transmission network, it has not been possible to import it for Mumbai by distribution companies, leading to rotational load-shedding." The statement claimed the power was expected to be normalised fully "by late night".
A spokesperson for the BEST supply division said: "Due to the unavailability of power from within and outside Mumbai, rotational load-shedding was imposed during the day in Dadar, Mahim, Dharavi, Sion, Prabhadevi, Parel, Sewri, Byculla, Chinchpokli, Girgaon, Mumbai Central and parts of Hutatma Chowk, Ballard Estate, Nariman Point and the area around Metro Cinema." Another official added: "We heard there was a problem with the turbines at unit 5."