Power supply in Mumbai Metropolitan Region fully restored, will check if there was sabotage behind outage: Maharashtra minister

Stating that the power supply to Mumbai has been fully restored, Maharashtra energy minister Nitin Raut on Tuesday expressed the possibility of flaws and failures

Stating that the power supply to Mumbai has been fully restored, Maharashtra energy minister Nitin Raut on Tuesday expressed the possibility of flaws and failures in following protocol at administrative level during Monday’s power outage. Besides the probe into the power failure, the minister said they were checking if there was any sabotage attempt. Excerpts from an interview with HT:

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Some parts of MMR are still facing power cuts. Why has the government not been able to fully restore power supply?

Mumbai’s peak hour requirement is 2700MW, which has been fulfilled now and the electricity supply has fully been restored. A few areas may be still facing outage because of the repair and maintenance works by private companies. Our officers have been constantly monitoring the situation. We restored the electricity in a record time of 3.5 hours, which otherwise would have required 8 hours.

There are allegations that administrative negligence and failure to manage the snag led to the power failure…

We have been examining various aspects that are expected to be responsible [for the outage]. Prima facie, the protocol for periodic maintenance and preventive measures does not appear to have been followed. Proper monitoring between two lines for load maintenance during the repair [was needed as] maintenance of one line was not done. This resulted in tripping of the second line as due arrangements did not appear to have been taken for the additional load on the second line. It needs to be seen if the snapping of the jumpers and conductors could have been averted by having pre-studied their previous records. Snapping of the conductors in remote parts of Talegaon (on Kalwa-Talegaon line) might have been the result of lack of proper patrolling using drones in these densely forested areas. It also needs to be seen if overload indication before tripping of the second line on Kalwe-Padghe line was received at our control room...

Does this mean administrative flaws have been found and caused the outage?

I have asked the department to submit me the preliminary report on this. We are expecting it in a day or two, until then I cannot comment if it was negligence.

Private companies are also alleging there was no proper communication from the government companies and it led to failure on their side...

Yes, there was a communication gap between our entities and private companies. The probe will also check if the protocols while dealing with such a situation were followed. Not only this, I have also asked to check if there was an attempt of sabotage which led to the outage. We will also check if the ongoing power war between private companies had any link with the incident.

The islanding system, which has been boasted about in the past, did not work during Monday’s crisis. What is the reason?

There were multiple failures in transmission lines resulting in load on lines of Tata Power and Adani Electricity. This was the major reason why the islanding did not work.

The Khaparde committee report submitted to the government in June 2011 after a similar power failure in November 2011 had suggested strengthening the transmission system in Mumbai...

Augmenting the transmission lines will cost ₹4,000 crore, which will result in burdening consumers to recover it. We do not think it is required at this juncture as we have been able to supply power without any disruption. Secondly, we have also asked the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission for their advice on it.

Why was the report not implemented in the past nine years?

I have asked the department to make a presentation on the recommendations on the committee report. We will prepare an action taken report which will be implemented in a time-bound manner.

Consumers are waiting for government’s decision on exorbitant bills raised during the Covid-19 lockdown. There were reports that the government was mulling 20-30% discount...

They are not exorbitant bills. The bills were issued on the average unit load in the absence of actual meter reading due to the lockdown. Disputes related to the reading can be resolved anytime. We haven’t so far decided on the discount on these bills.