Probe And Audit Ordered As Power Failure Hits Mumbai

Glitch cripples local train services; anticipating an ugly situation in COVID-19 times, BMC chief directed all hospitals to stock sufficient diesel for at least hours for generators to ensure no power failures in the ICUs

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MUMBAI

A major power breakdown owing to a grid failure brought bustling Mumbai and parts of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region of Thane, Raigad and Palghar districts to the knees on Monday, officials said here.

Ratled by the outrage over the outage, Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and Energy Minister Nitin Raut ordered a high-level probe into the incident, even as supply limped back to normalcy by 2:00 pm.

Raut said that some regular maintenance work was going on at the 400KV lines in Kalwa, Thane.

“There was some routine maintenance work underway on Circuit 1 of MSETCL’s 400 KV Kalwa Padgha GIS center. So the entire load was shited to Circuit 2. But because of a sudden technical glitch, large parts of Mumbai and Thane were affected,” Raut said in a video statement.

The situation was complicated with multiple trippings on the Kalwa-Padghe and Kharghar lines (Thane) and the transformers that supply power to Mumbai, resulting in total disruption of around 2,200 MW of power supply to the country’s commercial capital for several hours.