Power outage hits Mumbai yet again, many pockets plunge into darkness

Many pockets of Mumbai plunged into darkness on Monday evening in a power outage caused by what was termed as a "technical fault".

The outage comes amid a series of disruptions in power supply faced by the financial capital over the last month amid a severe shortage of electricity that has forced the state discom MSEDCL to initiate load-shedding in several parts of Maharashtra.

Suburbs like Bandra, Santacruz and Chembur, and pockets in central Mumbai such as Dadar reported the outage for over 15 minutes starting at 2130 hrs.

Adani Electricity Mumbai said 1.8 lakh consumers serviced by it were impacted because rival Tata Power's equipment failed at the Dharavi receiving station.

Tata Power sought to shift the blame on the Maharashtra State Electricity Transmission Company, claiming power tripping lasted for around 7 minutes.

“There was an incident of power tripping today for a very short time (around 7 minutes) due to tripping of 220kV MSETCL OLTS protection at their Trombay Receiving Station, giving shutdown to 160MW load at Tata Power's Dharavi Receiving Station,” an official spokesperson said.

About ten days ago, the state-run Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport undertaking, which had witnessed several outages in areas serviced by it, had said the ongoing heatwave is leading to extra demand from consumers which is resulting in disruptions as supply is not being able to keep pace with demand.

“Due to large increase in the temperature, people are using ACs and fans more, resulting in heavy demand and consumption of electricity suddenly. This may affect network and generates cable or feeder faults across island city,” a spokesperson for the civic body-run undertaking had said.

The city has suffered outages in February this year and multiple times over the last month ever since the state government admitted to a shortfall of about 3,000 MW.