Fire at Gurugram substation causes blackout, hits rapid metro operations

A major blackout hit Gurugram after a fire at a power substation, disrupting services and causing frustration among residents. Restoration efforts are ongoing.

A major blackout hit Gurugram on Friday night after a fire broke out at the 220kV power substation in Sector-72, said Haryana Vidyut Prasaran Nigam Limited (HVPNL) officials.

Fire at Gurugram substation causes blackout, hits rapid metro operations

The outage which affected Sectors 15, 18, and 38 to 57, also halted the rapid metro mid-journey, forcing passengers to get off and walk along the tracks to the nearest station. It was expected to take several hours to bring the substation back online, officials said.

The substation, which powers half the city, is a lifeline of the power supply infrastructure of Gurugram with seven more substations drawing electricity from it.

Kushal Kumar Sarkar, HVPNL superintendent engineer, Gurugram, said extreme heat caused the current transformer of one of the three main circuits of Power Grid Corporation of India Limited powering the Sector-72 substation to explode and catch fire.

“The fault affected others circuits too following which the outage took place which lasted from 60 to 90 minutes,” Sarkar said, adding, “We are restoring normalcy deploying available resources so that no further faults takes place due to sudden surge in load.”

Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam Limited officials said that supply was restored in the majority of the affected area by 11.30pm. “Complete restoration may take couple of more hours,” an official said.

Meanwhile, residents vented their ire on the power supply infrastructure of the city after the outage.

Puneet Pahwa, RWA general secretary of Sector 45 said that the supply in his area has been affected since 8pm. “This is how the city is expected to become a millennium city, with crumbling infrastructure and no long-term vision,” he said.

Kusum Sharma, Chairperson of Sun City RWA in sector 54 said that frequent and prolonged power outages during the summer season have become a yearly issue in Gurugram. “Every year, residents are forced to endure long electricity cuts during peak summer months. DHBVN and the administration needs to come up with some better solutions,” she said.

Dhruv Bansal, administrator, DLF Residents’ Welfare Association, said power outage issues must be highlighted so that the infrastructure is upgraded to take the load off the cyber city generator.

DMRC in a statement said that due to power supply failure from the Sector-72 substation, which feeds power to Rapid Metro, Gurugram city and Gurugram section of Yellow Line, train services were not available from 7:50pm to 8:33pm in the Rapid Metro.

“However, services on Yellow Line were regulated through the standby substation and were running normally during this period,” the spokesperson said. “Normal services on Rapid Metro were also restored once power supply was restored by HVPNL.”

Officials said that the lone government mortuary near Sector-12 also didn’t have the power supply, triggering fear of decomposition of the bodies amid the extreme heat.