Power has been restored to most of North India by Monday afternoon, after an early morning grid failure that left hundreds of millions of people without electricity.
P. Uma Shankar, secretary of India's Ministry of Power, said that by 4:00 p.m. 70 to 75 percent of northern India's power had been restored. In Delhi, power was 90 percent restored, he said.
Power was supplied first to services such as hospitals, water pumping stations and the Delhi Metro. The shortage was met through a patchwork of sources including a thermal plant in Badarpur, several gas turbines and hydropower from the east, including a project in Tala, Bhutan.
The reason for Monday's outage, which started at about 2:30 a.m., is still unclear.
“This is a one-off situation†said Ajai Nirula, the chief operating officer of North Delhi Power Limited, a joint venture betwee n Tata Power and the Delhi government, which distributes power to nearly 1.2 million people in the north and northwest of Delhi. “Everyone was surprised.â€
Mr. Shankar said a three-person team was investigating the outage.
Most of India's northern states use more power than they generate and rely on a complex network of contracts with power plants in other states to keep the lights on. Electricity officials sometimes characterize the situation as a battle between states to secure as much power as they need.
“Until corrective action and preventive action is taken, the system will remain under strain,†Mr. Nirula said.
