When the grid collapses
Infrastructural failure affects millions

SO dependent are we on electrical power that for a number of hours trains, emergency services, hospitals and life in general came to a standstill in the national capital, and in several north Indian states, including Punjab, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh when the national grid, the network supplying electricity, collapsed on Sunday night. Chandigarh too was affected by the most significant outage of the decade. While the exact cause of the collapse of the grid will only come out once a three-member panel constituted by the Power Minister, Mr Sushil Kumar Shinde, submits its report, the finger of suspicion points to an excessive demand for power from various state electricity boards.

For the the national grid to operate, a frequency has to be maintained at 50 Hz, at all times. Only a tiny variation, 0.5 per cent at the most, is allowed. There are rules that do not allow various electricity boards to draw more power than has been allocated to them. However, of late, there have been so many violations that the New Delhi-based National Regional Load Dispatch Centre formally complained against erring states to the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission. On the other hand, delayed and below par monsoon has increased the demand for power from various sectors, including the agricultural sector. Coupled with the fact that most states do not have the resources to generate power, this has been a long difficult summer for people of India, especially for those in the north, who have had to face regular power cuts and blackouts. Lack of power in many states, including Punjab and Haryana, has led to their overdrawing electric power which put a strain on the grid.

The Northern Grid serves about 28 per cent of the country’s population. It has had its share of problems, like the failure in January 2010, that was attributed to moisture buildup caused by fog, and a major outage in 2001-02. In the present instance, while the engineers have moved in fast to restore normalcy to the region, the grid collapse is an ominous sign for times to come if long-lasting measures are not taken to build and run power plants that are urgently needed to fulfil the needs of the nation that is consuming more power than it can generate. In the meanwhile, state boards would be well advised to exercise restraint and desist from overdrawing their quotas.