Maharashtra government mulls expanding capacity of islanding system to avoid power outage in Mumbai

Following the major power outage in Mumbai in October, the Maharashtra government is mulling expanding the capacity of the islanding system, meant to supply uninterrupted

Following the major power outage in Mumbai in October, the Maharashtra government is mulling expanding the capacity of the islanding system, meant to supply uninterrupted electricity to the city. The state is intending to expand the capacity to somewhere between 2,500 megawatts (MW) to 3,000MW from the existing 1,600MW.

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The issue was discussed in a meeting chaired by chief minister (CM) Uddhav Thackeray on Monday.

A grid failure had resulted in massive power outages in Mumbai and its suburban areas on October 12, stopping trains, disrupting office work and hitting economic activity. It took two hours for the power supply to resume for essential services; other pockets started receiving power in a phase-wise manner.

Mumbai’s islanding system – through which the power supplied to the city gets isolated in case of a state-wide grid failure – failed, which led to power outage for close to 15 hours in many areas.

State energy minister Nitin Raut said they have to expand the capacity of the islanding system to avoid such a situation in the future.

“We need to augment the capacity of the islanding system. We are contemplating to increase it to between 2,500MW to 3,000MW. Currently, we are getting only 1,300MW as the power plants are unable to generate at full capacity. The city requires up to 2,800MW power on peak days. For this, we need to increase power generation and thus, needed to speak with the oil and coal companies,” said the energy minister.

“This is also necessary as by 2030 the consumption of the city is expected to increase to 5,000MW,” he added.

“We also need to consider the report of the technical committee formed by the state government to ascertain causes of power outage and similar reports sought by the Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission (MERC) and the Centre,” Raut added.

To handle the disruptions in power supply, Tata Power in 1981 developed the islanding system that is meant to ensure that the power systems of Tata and Adani plants are intentionally isolated or islanded from the external grid. This helps the power generated at these plants to be transmitted to concentrated areas and enables the authorities to continue supply to essential-category customers.

Of the approximate 2,400MW-2,600MW power supply to Mumbai, 1,600MW is to be islanded, with Tata’s Trombay thermal plant’s 500MW; 600MW from hydrogeneration units in Khopoli, and 500MW from Adani’s Dahanu plant. The system could not work as Tata plants failed to isolate from the rest of the grid. Adani Power’s Dahanu plant islanded 385MW (the supply has been reduced from 500MW owing to the Covid-19 lockdown), officials said.