Northern Indian states face further power cuts

• 11 years ago (2012-08-21)
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India’s northern states could face further power cuts as three hydropower plants, together supplying almost 3000 MW to the region, have been shut down.

The 1500 MW Nathpa Jhakri, 1000 MW Karcham-Wangtoo and 300 MW Chamera II hydro plants have all been shut temporarily due to high silt levels in water.

"The plant has to be closed if the silt level in water goes up beyond the benchmark level... we are closely analysing the situation and expect to restart the plant tomorrow (Tuesday) morning," Nathpa Jhakri's Executive Director RK Bansal said.

The Northern Grid, which these plants normally feed into, is made up of nine regions and supplies 28 per cent of India’s population.

A Power Grid Corp official has confirmed that as a result of the shutdowns the Northern grid has a shortfall of approximately 3000 MW, with total demand at around 33 000 MW.

This latest incident comes within a few weeks of the failure of the Northern, Eastern and North Eastern power grids on July 31 – together one of world's biggest ever power outages.

The Uttar Pradesh government has said that it averted full failure of the Northern Grid since electricity supplies were cut to certain districts.

"We timely succeeded in averting grid failure by cutting power supply to some districts," Principal Secretary Energy AK Gupta said.