Mumbai power outage: MERC orders inquiry, report expected in 3 months

Taking suo moto cognisance on the Mumbai power outage earlier this month, the Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission (MERC) has ordered an independent inquiry

Taking suo moto cognisance on the Mumbai power outage earlier this month, the Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission (MERC) has ordered an independent inquiry into the incident. The investigating committee has been directed to submit a report on the matter within three months prior to which an interim report is expected in a month.

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In its order released on Friday, MERC stated that the committee needs to “verify and analyse the submissions of all parties, to find out the root cause of the incident, to examine the adequacy of protection systems/islanding system, etc, and to verify the adequacy of responses of all concerned.”

The committee also has to probe if generation and distribution companies followed protocol for restoration of power supply to the city.

In a separate notification, MERC stated that the committee would include retired Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer Dr Sudhir Kumar Goel as chairman, V Ramakrishnan, ex-member of the Central Electricity Authority and Dr Faruk Kazi, head of the electrical engineering department at the Veermara Jijabai Technical Institute. It has also directed the parties involved or the distribution companies to conduct and submit internal inquiries to the commission, and the committee constituted by it.

MERC, on Wednesday, had conducted a hearing with the distribution companies on the power outage that crippled Mumbai and its adjoining areas on October 12. Many areas in the city and the metropolitan region did not receive power for almost 15 hours.

According to the order, the committee will also suggest remedial measures on a medium-term basis and corrective actions to avoid such incidents in the future. State energy minister Nitin Raut has also ordered an inquiry by a six-member committee to examine the reasons which led to the massive outage.

Plan to set up 1,000 MW gas power unit at Uran

State energy minister Nitin Raut on Thursday asked the Maharashtra State Energy Generation Company Ltd (Mahagenco) to set-up a 1000 MW gas power unit at the Uran Gas Turbine Power Generation to support Mumbai’s growing power demands. He asked the state’s generation company to submit a project report at the earliest. At present, Mumbai’s peak power demand is close to 2800MW, which is expected to increase to 500MW by 2030. Currency the Uran station has a capacity of 672MW which can be increased with already available infrastructure, a statement issued by Raut’s office stated.