India Power Outage

They're know what caused it, they simply overdrew from the grid part of it failed and a cascade failure occurred India has to power ration it's states, and someone broke the rules. The government made a statement to this effect without specifically stating what state was to blame.

India's power grid is in trouble right now because it's culture and industry is modernizing so fast they can't build power plants fast enough to keep up with demand.

That's not what I heard. I heard that the power production capacity was more than sufficient for even the most robust growth projection but that the power distribution infrastructure was the problem. The power distribution had far too many undocumented alternate paths from sloppy archiving and out right theft of service that an overload cascaded in unplanned ways that took down multiple grids.

Yes! You are spot one. I appreciate you, situated far away, is able to analyse the issue very correctly. Smart grid the way out.But than when politics, language, creed, caste, regionalism precedes merit there is no way one can get to the most appropriate solution.

I'm certain that they're well maintained but denying that something went wrong will not help. A slow methodical review of all parties and hardware is in order with nobody being made the scape goat. People make reasonable guesses about what the future will need and design accordingly. We should not forget that they are just guesses. You're in the finger pointing stage right now where good people are terrified that they will be blamed for any slight deviation perceived or real from any design specification. So it is too soon to say with certainty what precisely happened over a large complicated system. Thus a precise, cost effective solution that will prevent a large repeat failure cannot be known, yet.

A difficult but useful point to try and get across to the public is that the fuses and disconnects that removed power from users did prevent a lot of equipment from getting damaged on both sides of these switches. This is why an infrastructure that took decades to build only took hours (days?) to restore.

Your point is quite valued . This type of major grid failure should open the eyes of engineers to ignore any directive that may cause such major power outings and additional protection is to be installed at major load dispatch centers which cannot be over ride manually. There is always provision for over riding automatic cutoff by manual by pass on orders of state policy makers and bureaucrats who does not understand the technical aspects and consequences on issuing orders to over ride the the system From the reports that came out is a clear indication of what happened. A report from a highly reputed national news paper regarding one of the previous grid failure is given below which appears to be correct from my experience.

http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/overdrawal-of-power-led-to-grid-failure/234089/

The ability to over ride must be in place for emergency and contingencies.

Any adhoc over riding actions have to be authorised by some one who will be accountable for the outcomes.

<...find the defaulters...>

Rather than operate in Blame Mode, it would be far better to concentrate on the technicalities that need to be sorted out in order to prevent a recurrence!

it proves to what extent the north indian racist rulers allow their people to overload the lines as well as robbing power illegally.

That is definitely a key part of it, but- as noted earlier, THE GRID is not up to pushing THAT much power THAT far.

India also is facing a major MACRO power issue because they don't have enough water to support all of the new power plants they want to build. WATER there is an even bigger issue than power.

I know of a planned ultra-high efficiency building in India that is waiting because they do not have enough fresh water to support the cooling towers and the occupants.

My company is finalizing the design of a multi-fuel (nat gas, LP, land fill gas, digester methane, or fuel oil, kerosene, ethanol, bio-diesel or bio-kerosene) CoGen system where each module can produce 600,000 to 750,000 liters a day of water recycled from virtually ANY dirty water stream- sea water, "frack water", or even municipal sewer water (vaporized and condensed into distilled water) while generating 3.5 MW of power. That distributed generation should be able to take the "load" off the GRID while providing fresh water.

If bulk supply consumers like local bodies,industries etc spread over several states over-consume and go unpunished there should be a big burden on the EHT grid.

Under the present condition of Indian power generation which is always much less than the requirement, large Industries are depending on their own generation to cover the shortfall when ever partial power cut is imposed or when there is a total power failure. For them strict load control is enforced by the electric supply authority ( State electricity board). The exception is only emergency services and certain privileged Government Factories who have a contractual obligation with the state electricity board. Even they have captive generation to tide over the unexpected power outage due to natural calamity. There is regular planned power cut which is imposed depending on the actual power consumption and available power. So in normal conditions a burden on EHT grid will not happen as it is properly regulated and monitored. So the Industries can consume only what power is allotted to them. The Grid failure can happen only if there is an unexpected simultaneous failure of many generators due to any reason or transmission failure due to natural calamity. The actual problem come from the uncontrolled rural area where power is provided during summer for agricultural purpose. The exception is cities like Mumbay ( Bombay) where the power is by private agencies and Pune City where there is arrangement with private factories and establishments share their exes captive generation with State Electricity Board to cover the short fall to avoid uninterrupted power supply for which extra cost is levied from the consumers.

The actual problem come from the rural power requirement of farmers during cultivation and peak summer for irrigation . The requirement of which come simultaneously as the draught conditions and pumping become essential . The solution for this is only going with power generation from solar/wind energy or rural natural gas plants in a big way in the rural sector. That should be the wise decision to be approved by the State Governments and Energy ministry of Government of India.

While travelling across NJ (USA) I have noticed that all most all alternate electrical poles are mounted with solar panel which really surprised me because USA has no shortage of power now. It is learnt that they are planning it now to cater for power requirement of 2020, if they have to shutdown the nuclear power plants by then. This is real advance planning which India is lacking. I was told that majority of the power requirement of California even now is generated from solar power from the deserts of Arizona . ( I am not very much confirmed about this information , our US engineers can confirm to it whether it is correct ). Let us hope if the Electrical planners of Government understand this reality at least now instead of playing politics.

To my knowledge, the solar panels you saw on many power distribution poles in NJ provide backup power for electronics attached to that pole. The electronics are not necessarily for power distribution control and monitoring but that certainly does happen. Some of the solar panels were for telecommunications, weather monitoring, traffic control and monitoring, and many more functions.

I have seen these panels connected directly to LT distribution system. So I checked on line to verify it . Seen some articles but not with my direct answer. A para of such a an article reproduced below:-

"The solar boom in New Jersey has been ushered in by a series of forward-thinking, smart policies of incentives and subsidies. In 2001, when the solar incentives programs were launched, New Jersey had six photovoltaic systems installed in the entire state. As of last week, that number had rocketed to 15,778, with another 4,400 projects in the pipeline.

The recent legislation focuses on improving these programs. In a bipartisan manner, it deftly caters to both the utilities and solar owners and installers while addressing the fundamental issue with the current system-namely, that the solar industry would become a victim of its own explosive growth.

The same New Yorkers who brand their neighboring state "the armpit of America" are poised to adopt a solar incentive program nearly identical to the one New Jersey has now. Massachusetts, Maryland and Ohio have all incorporated aspects of New Jersey's solar policies into their own solar programs."

Seeing this article I presumed that these panels are for capturing real solar energy to add to the distribution system.

<...power drawn by such minor residential slum dwellers does not affect the EHT grid...>

Does the principle of Conservation of Energy not apply to these people, then?

In addition to al l the comments posted here, I read Government of India has taken necessary steps to revise the rules to impose more discipline on grid power disruption. It is also to be noted that how the technocrats handled the situation.

u can not say it is a administrative failure. any how it was a technical fault. we must learn from our mistakes to avoid this happen again in future.all world got this news u can not make them fool by say it was a admnt failure. world want to know exact reaason and hat u r doing to avoid in future

Dear CR 4 friends,

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article3718642.ece?homepage=true provides an excellent and comprehensive analysis of the power outage.

There were other reasons too. Due to shortfall in rains farmers in north had to irrigate their fields with electric pumps on larger scale. Also too much heat resulted in longer running time A/Cs and fans.Of course indiscipline in overdrawing of power from the grid.

i work with one of the utility that is being blamed for this massive fail of grid. what i've read above is only the the news paper version fed by the government.no apparent case of overdrawl as a 765 kv line charged at 400 kV(quad bursemese acsr 42.00mm size) was running at about 1000MW and about 900MW at up end.the line is owned by pgcil a central government utility and it is a tie line between western and northern grid and when the fault developed in the line it was cleared at mp's end and couldn't be cleared at pgcil up end resulting in outage of additional 400 kV lines and generators there after. Similar problem arose the very next day and load on the line was below 1000MW.authorities are not able to analyse the problem and are also hiding some type of protection failure at pgcil substation at agra with up being the favourite whipping boy. a system (northern grid )designed for 25000 MW a shock of 1000MW shouln't affect it

If interconnection was done using hvdc will such a breakdown again happen?.

are there plans for a hvdc backbone? is sync a part of the problem?

There may be grid indiscipline, there may be administrative influence, there may be demand supply mismatch etc. etc.- these are not in our hands ,but technology should take care of all these vagaries. The monitoring and protection system in Load Dispatch Centres should be designed to take care of such unwanted situations. Properly designed load shedding schemes should be in place to isolate the faulty system or the line which is overdrawing power. Sensing under frequency or rate of fall of frequency (df/dt) a healthy system should isolate itself from the interconnected grid and protect its customers from unwanted power failure. This will prevent total grid collapse and the system can be restored promptly after a disaster.

I agree with you, especially "technology should take care of all these vagaries". Technology is available but political will is lacking. I quote from leading advertisement a smart grid is like" turning the "Jurassic" linear energy grid into an intelligent and interactive network, it is changing our behaviors, revolutionizing the energy value chain like the internet revolutionized IT in the late 90s".

Of course the outage was a technical problem.

Cascading overload is a technical problem.

That independent overloads can cause cascading overloads is a technical problem.

What to do?

It just takes folk with authority to make decisions to allocate resources to fix problems.

This outage may well be the best thing that ever happened.

Listen up you rolly polly admin types......NO MORE EXPENSIVE WEDDINGS FOR YOUR UGLY DAUGHTERS!!!!

You get it?

The next time an engineer tells you that a 1" bolt is not the same as an HRC fuse....LISTEN TO HIM!!!!

Heads will roll...or at least they should.

It just takes folk with authority to make decisions to allocate resources to fix problems.
Thats the problem, no one wants to make a decision.

In a Nut-Shell, GROSS INDISCIPLINE at all Levels is the root cause for the Grid Collapse - having no respect to the min. rules, especially administrative front.

DHAYANANDHAN.S