Panipat thermal plant trips again
Manish Sirhindi
Tribune News Service

Panipat, January 17
The two inter-connecting transformers (ICTs) of the Bhakra Beas Management Board (BBMB) at Sewah, Panipat, seem to have become a major source of power disruption in the state, as three units of the Panipat thermal power plant tripped again late last night due to some technical snag developed at these ICTs.

Unit Nos. 1, 2 and 4 of the thermal plant tripped at 1.30 am which even lead to the disruption of supply to the Railways for a couple of minutes, which was restored promptly by giving supply from 220 kV sub-station in Safidon.

The authorities of the Panipat thermal plant gave “reference supply” to the three units which got disrupted at 8.29 am due to some snag. Though the authorities here managed to bring back units 1 and 4, but unit number 2 of the plant could not be restored till the filing of this report.

Sources at the Panipat thermal plant said the three units, of 110 MW each, stumbled due to the tripping of two 440 kV ICTs of the BBMB at Sewah.

This was the fourth time in the past few days that a snag at the Sewah (BBMB, Panipat) sub-station caused outage of generating units at the Panipat thermal power plant, which could even have lead to the collapse of the northern grid.

However, the system collapse situation was averted due to timely action by the Haryana Power Utilites in co-ordination with Northern Region Load Dispatch Centre by load regulation and voltage control.

The sources said the matter had already been taken up by the power utilities with the BBMB authorities to initiate corrective measures to prevent any such happening again.