The World Record Black out in India yesterday is the world record for power outage.
The government is clueless as to what has happened and has instituted an enquiry into the incident.
Why have Central Electrical Authority at all?
If remember correctly it was Jayalalithaa, the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu who stated that the State was unable to draw Power from Gujarat which had released Power to meet Tamil Nadu‘s Power shortage,because the CEA was unable to release the Power due to technical problems as CEA cuts supply if a State draws more power.
How come CEA seems to know nothing of this affair?
Power Grids have Tripping Systems.
Intriguing.
Story:
NEW DELHI: India’s power network was back at full capacity on Wednesday after two days of massive outages that blacked out half the country and left more than 600 million people without electricity.
“Power has been restored fully across the northern, eastern and north-eastern grids,” Power System Operation Corp chief SK Soonee said.
Monday’s failure of the northern network, followed by the expanded collapse of all three grids after midday Tuesday caused chaos across a vast region, paralysing transport networks.
Hundreds of miners were trapped underground for hours in the eastern states of West Bengal and Jharkhand, metro services were stopped temporarily in the capital New Delhi and hundreds of trains were held up nationwide.
New power minister Veerappa Moily, who was appointed to the post in a Cabinet reshuffle even as Tuesday’s unprecedented crisis was still playing out, admitted he faced an enormous task in restoring public confidence.
“It is a very difficult and challenging situation, and solutions will have to be found,” Moily said in a series of interviews with Indian television networks, one of which was interrupted by a blackout.
According to senior ministry officials, the two successive days of grid failure had been triggered by energy-hungry states drawing power beyond their allocated limits.
“I’m not going to start with a blame game. The Centre and the states will have to work together on this,” Moily said.
“The fact is that energy demand across India is huge, and we have to try and keep in touch with the pace of development,” he added.
The massive power cuts left Indians angry and frustrated in cities across the affected region, as they struggled through gridlocked streets in the humid monsoon heat.
Wednesday’s newspapers were predictably critical of the government, saying it lacked the political will to implement long called for reforms in the power sector.
“Powerless and Clueless,” ran the front-page headline in the Times of India, while the Economic Times splashed with “Superpower India, RIP”.
Business lobby group the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) estimated the losses to small and large business in billions of rupees (tens of millions of dollars) and said India’s investment image abroad had taken a major hit.
The repeated outages “carry a very negative image of India, when already sentiments about the country are low on account of the current economic situation,” CII director general Chandrajit Banerjee said in a statement.
As one of the world’s fastest emerging economies, it is “imperative that our basic infrastructure requirements” are in keeping with India’s aspirations, Banerjee said.
“The recent developments have created a huge dent in the country’s reputation that is most unfortunate,” he added.
The government has set a target of $400 billion of private and public investment over the next five years, but its track record is abysmal.
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