A power outage in Mumbai, which took place at around 9:50am today (Sunday, February 27, 2022), was restored in about an hour.
Power supply was affected in south Mumbai, and suburbs like Chembur, Bandra, Santacruz, etc. Supply to Central Railway and Western Railway was also impacted.
The outage was the result of tripping of a 220kV transmission line of Maharashtra State Electricity Transmission Co Ltd (MSETCL, Mahatransco) at the Trombay receiving station that connects to the transmission system of Tata Power.
This resulted in tripping of the Trombay power generation plant, and cascade tripping of some internal lines affecting 850 mw load of all discoms in Mumbai.
Tata Power immediately stepped up hydropower generation from its Khopoli power plant to full capacity for faster restoration and avoidance of larger outage. Power supply was restored completely in around an hour.
Commenting on the situation, Sanjay Banga, President – T&D, Tata Power, said, “Today morning at around 9:50 hrs we felt grid disturbance in our Tata Power system. Our initial investigation is that this disturbance in our grid was because of the tripping of MSETCL lines.
There are four circuits at MSETCL which supply power to our Trombay receiving stations. Two circuits were already under maintenance; the third circuit tripped at 8:40 hours, and the last circuit at 9:50 hours. When it tripped, it created a disturbance in our Tata Power system.
There was a reduction in demand to the tune of 850 mw. The total demand of Mumbai came down from 2000 MW to around 1200 mw and different parts of Mumbai were affected like South Mumbai, Chembur, and suburban areas.
These trippings of MSETCL created a disturbance in our Tata Power system. We restored the power supply within one hour; stepped up our hydro generation to full capacity; and avoided a much larger damage. The detailed investigation of this outage is on. We are coordinating with all agencies, including SLDC, to find out the exact reason and see how we can avoid such incidents in the future.”
An official spokesperson of Adani Electricity Mumbai Ltd, a private discoms in Mumbai, said, “”Today’s power outage was caused due to tripping of 220kV transmission line and subsequent outage of Tata’s Trombay power plant. Adani Electricity consumers were largely unaffected by today’s power outage as we were able to ramp up our generation at Dahanu in a very short time. This helped early restoration of consumers in South Mumbai as well.”
Outage of October 2020
In October 2020, a similar outage had taken place in Mumbai. As a consequence, the Maharashtra government, in November 2020, approved the plan of constructing an underground HVDC line to improve power supply to Mumbai. (Read more).
Featured photograph for representation only
