New Delhi:
The Northern Grid, the vital power supply line to the entire North India, has witnessed as many as 21 forced transmission outages due to fog in the last one week.
The interruptions in transmission lines, which occurred mostly in early morning hours, were rectified within a short span averting crisis for the Northern Grid. However, there have been no outages due to fog in the last two days.
These instances come at a time when the authorities are making all efforts to prevent grid failures like the one in July that impacted millions of people.
"In the past few years, there have been instances of transmission lines being hit by fog. The recent incidents were addressed fast. There have not been any fog-induced issues in the Northern Grid in the last two days," an official engaged in grid operations said on Thursday.
Following the collapse of grids in July, the Power Ministry had set up panels to look into related issues and they have also come out with various action plans.
Since December 21, there have been 21 incidences of forced outages due to fog. Of those, about 13 happened on December 24, according to Transmission Elements Outage Reports. These reports have been prepared by the Northern Regional Load Despatch Centre (NLRDC).
NLRDC manages electricity loads in the Northern Grid. On December 23, there were five forced outages due to fog while it was two each on December 21 and 25.
Most of the affected transmission lines were operated by Power Grid and UP Power Transmission Corp Ltd.
The official said that efforts are being made to ensure that interruptions due to fog are averted. "We are taking all precautions such as replacing ceramic insulators with polymer insulators.
The Northern Grid, one of the largest in the country, covers nine places -- Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, J&K and Chandigarh.
India has five electricity grids -- Northern, Eastern, North Eastern, Southern and Western. All of them are inter-connected, except the Southern grid.