Mumbai Powercut: A central grid failure, brings the Mayanagari to a standstill

2020 has been an adventurous year for the world and while we deal with one issue, another one is ready to throw challenges on us. After a cyclone, a locust storm, and amidst a pandemic, Mumbai and some areas surrounding it witnessed a major power outage. Electricity was cut in most parts for over an hour.

This power outage in Navi Mumbai, South Bombay, and Thane also affected the Central and Western Railways. Regular life came to a halt after a failure occurring in the central grid of TATA power at Kalwa hit the distribution of electricity services in the city by Adani and BEST. The power cut led to lots of exams for UG and PG courses to be rescheduled, even some hearings at the High Court were affected since video conferencing took a hit. However, after working on restoring the supplies, power was back in some parts of Mumbai. 

Latest Update about the power cut

While at 10:05 am the electric supplies were cut, railway lines from CSMT to Diva and Churchgate to Vasai were also affected. But with services being restored in an hour’s time, things got back to normal quickly. Many areas of South Mumbai and Suburbs like Colaba, Churchgate, Haji Ali, Tardeo, Breach Candy, Juhu, Andheri, Mira Road, Thane, Chembur, Mulund, Panvel, etc were largely affected. Though the issue has been fixed now, Maharashtra CM Uddhav Thackeray ordered a probe on Mumbai Power outage. Even the State Energy Minister Nitin Raut said that the technical snag in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region will be probed once services are resumed. As per the latest updates, there is no power supply in some areas of Bandra, while power supply has been restored in Kandivali. And the technicians are still working on the issue. 

Bollywood reacts to Power Cut

With this major power outage in Mumbai, many people took to social media addressing the issue, amongst them there were also celebs like Amitabh Bachchan, Anupam Kher, Nimrat Kaur, Kangana Ranaut, Richa Chadha who took to Twitter to comment on the situation. 

While Amitabh Bachchan wrote, “Entire city in power outage .. somehow managing this message .. keep calm all shall be well .. Amitabh Bachchan.” 

Kangana also took a dig at the management and tweeted, “#Powercut in Mumbai, meanwhile Maharashtra government क-क-क.......कंगना ।"

Check out the other tweets here: 

What is a power grid failure? And how does it happen?

The power grid is formed of three constituents - generating stations, transmission lines, and substations. It functions at a narrow frequency of 49.5Hz to 50.2Hz and this grid fails when the frequency either falls below the lower limit or shoots above the upper limit. This results in transmission lines to stop accepting power supply and other grid constituents. As a result of this, the generating stations go out of order. During a grid failure, restoring power is a complicated process. It is a difficult task as the management authorities need to start restoring transmission lines and at the same time make alternative arrangements for electric supply. Generating stations also need to be restarted, and minute details need to be analyzed which makes the process a time-consuming one. 

Well, things have gotten back to normal now, but its 2020 and anything can be expected in the next two-three months. With this unexpected event, let us see what this year has in store for the people next. Stay tuned!

Written by Nawaz Kochra