MUMBAI : The massive power outage in Mumbai and its suburbs last week has exposed fault lines in the city’s four-decade-old power islanding system. Even as a committee appointed by the Central Electricity Authority is probing the outage, it is clear that the energy-guzzling city’s generation and distribution networks need an upgrade.
Mumbai practically came to a standstill around 10am on 12 October by the blackout. The outage that lasted from 2 to 15 hours depending on the locality was caused by a cascade of failures that started with the western grid and ended with the city’s famed islanding network also tripping.
The islanding system, built by Tata Power in 1981, is designed to isolate its electricity network from the rest of the western grid during widespread grid disturbances.
