Overloading of Gwalior-Agra line gives sleepless nights to Meerut
The overloading of the Gwalior-Agra transmission line is giving sleepless nights to the residents of city of Meerut these days.
The overloading of the Gwalior-Agra transmission line is giving sleepless nights to the residents of city of Meerut these days.
The city automatically gets plugged out of the power grid every now and then, the moment the 400 KV Gwalor-Agra line gets overloaded, with residents groping in the dark for hours.
Sources said that closure of hydro power plants in Uttarakhand because of the recent deluge there was overstraining the inter-state Gwalior-Agra transmission line, since the power required to meet western UP’s demand was being flown through this line.
“But flow of extra power overloads the line and the moment more than 2,000 MW power starts flowing through this line, the system automatically cuts off supply to Meerut to ease the line and save the grid from the collapse,” explained an official.
The overloading of the Gwalior-Agra transmission line was responsible for the grid failure in July last year, when 20 states were plunged into darkness. The incident led the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) to issue an order banning the overloading of this line in future.
“Now, the Central power control system has developed a mechanism that sends out alerts and automatically plugs the required load out of the grid to bring the power load of the line to the permissible and safe level,” the official explained.
Admitting to Meerut facing the problem for last two weeks because of the overloading of the Gwalior-Agra transmission line, UP Power Transmission Corporation Ltd (UPTCL) director, operations, AK Singh said that they had even taken up the issue with the Centre.
“We took up the issue with the Central power ministry but they told us that to name some other city for load shedding if we wanted Meerut to be exempted,” he said, adding, “But our problem is that we cannot allow Agra to face load shedding because of the Supreme Court’s order for 24-hours supply to the city".