Tens of millions of people in North India were without power and early morning commutes in Delhi were thrown into chaos Monday after a massive electrical grid failure.
“Yes there are problems with Northern Grid, we are trying to restore it,†an official from Power System Operating, which manages the grid, told India Today without specifying what those problems were.
Power was out in the entire state of Rajasthan, population 67 million, for several hours Monday morning after the grid failure, which happened around 2:30 a.m. Other states affected included Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Haryana. An estimated 360 million people were affected by the outage.
Power was also out in many parts of India's capital city of Delhi early Monday morning, and the Delhi Metro, which carries almost 2 million passengers a day, was completely down for several hours. Delhi Metro offi cials said that services were back up on all six of the lines by 8:45 A.M., thanks to hydro-electric power from Bhutan. Services from Noida, an East Delhi suburb, were running slowly and cars were crowded, commuters said.
On Saturday, in an unrelated incident, a cat leapt into a Delhi grid station and was electrocuted, causing a fire that left parts of East Delhi without power for 24 hours. “The cat must have been wet,†a spokesperson for BSES told The Hindu.
