“About 600 million people lost power in India on Tuesday when the country's northern and eastern electricity grids failed, crippling the country for a second consecutive day,†Heather Timmons and Sruthi Gottipati wrote in The New York Times.
“The outage stopped hundreds of trains in their tracks, darkened traffic lights, shuttered the Delhi Metro and left everyone from the police to water utilities to private businesses and citizens without electricity. About half of India's population of 1.2 billion people was without power.â€
Manoranjan Kumar, an economic advisor with the Ministry of Power, said in a telephone interview that the grids had failed and that the ministry was working to figure out the source of the problem. The northern and eastern grids cover 11 states and the capital city of Delhi, stretching from India's northern tip in Kashmir to Rajasthan to West Bengal's capital of Kolkata.
The failure happened without warning just after 1:00 p.m., electric company officials said.
“We seem to have plunged into another power failure, and the reasons why are not at all clear,†said Gopal K. Saxena, the chief executive of BSES, an electric company that services South Delhi, in a telephone interview. It may take a long time to restore power to north India, he said, because the eastern grid has also failed, and alternate power sources in Bhutan and the Indian state of Sikkim flow into the east first.
About two hours after the grid failure, power ministry authorities said some alternate arrangements had been made. “We are taking hydro power from Bhakhra Nangal Dam,†in northern India, said Sushil Kumar Shinde, the power minister, in a televised interview.
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