 "Fire at UP substation trips power supply to several parts of Delhi")
Several parts of the national capital were under power outage for hours in the afternoon, including central government buildings housing key ministries.
The outage reportedly disrupted the charge-taking ceremony at various ministries across Shastri Bhawan, Rail Bhawan, and Shram Shakti Bhawan.
The reason for the outage was a fire incident at a substation in Mandola, near the Loni border (Delhi-UP border) at Ghaziabad.
The substation is operated by Power Grid Corporation of India (Power Grid).
“There was a brief disruption of power flow at 2.10 pm in the 220 kV Mandola substation of Delhi Transco, being maintained by Power Grid, due to technical problems. The maintenance team of Power Grid took prompt action and ensured restoration of power from 2.50 pm to 3.22 pm. The power flow in the 220 kV system was around 1,200 Mw at the time of disruption and 1,350 Mw after restoration,” Power Grid said in a post on its social media handle.
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Officials at Delhi Transco, the power transmission company in Delhi, confirmed this. It said the restoration was prompt as the fault was identified quickly.
An official said high demand during daytime, coupled with intense heat, could be the reason behind the fire.
Heat waves across North India have caused fire incidents in substations, which anyway get heated due to the demand load.
Several local reports from Uttar Pradesh said the electricity department has installed coolers and fans at substations to prevent fires.
Atishi, Aam Aadmi Party leader and Delhi minister, said at a press conference that Delhi gets 1,500 Mw of power from the substation that caught fire.
“This is a very serious issue. I will seek time on Tuesday from new Union power minister Manohar Lal Khattar, chairman of PGCIL, and chairman of NTPC. There is very limited electricity production in Delhi. Most of the electricity in Delhi comes from different states. It is of great concern that on Tuesday the national power infrastructure of our country failed,” she said.
There was no update of any meeting with Khattar.