Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Aug 1: Notwithstanding the collapse of Northern Grid twice during the past two days, Jammu and Kashmir was one of the few affected States, which restored the power to majority of consumers within shortest possible time.
All this became possible due to the coordinated efforts of different wings of Power Development Department and other stakeholders.
Official sources told EXCELSIOR that following snapping of power supply to entire Kashmir valley in January 6-7 this year due to snag in the Kishenpur-Wagoora Transmission Line, the Power Development Department tried to run power projects in Valley in isolation but failed to do so.
“In anticipation of similar crisis in future, Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah, who is also holding the power portfolio, wrote to the then Union Power Minister, Sushil Kumar Shinde, stressing the need to have some arrangements in order to ensure that January 6-7 like situation didn’t recur and people are not put to inconvenience even during the snapping of only transmission line between Jammu and Srinagar”, sources said.
Accordingly, the Union Power Minister constituted an expert committee comprising officers of Jammu and Kashmir Power Development Department, NHPC and Power Grid Corporation India Limited (PGCIL) under Central Electricity Authority to deliberate upon the issue of local grid management without synchronization with the Northern Grid, sources further said.
It was due to the experience, which the officers of State Power Development Department gained in three meetings of the expert committee, that they effectively managed the crisis following the failure of the Northern Grid twice during the past two days.
“Soon after the crisis, the experienced officers of PDD, NHPC and PGCIL started local grid management in the most coordinated manner and the power of Salal, Uri and local generating stations of the Power Development Corporation was pooled”, they said, adding “the projects were accordingly operated in isolation, which is otherwise very difficult due to technical reasons”.
“By effectively operating hydroelectric projects in isolation, the Power Development Department restored electricity to 1/3rd of its consumers within two hours of the Northern Grid failure”, they said, adding “the swiftness on the part of J&K authorities in ensuring supply of power by utilizing local grid management mechanism has been appreciated by the Union Power Ministry”.
In response to a question, sources said, “now the PDD authorities are capable enough for local grid management and this would go a long way in providing relief to the consumers even in the event of Northern Grid failure or snag in the main transmission line between Jammu and Srinagar”.
Stating that this problem was never visualized in the past, sources said, “this is for the first time that any Power Minister of Jammu and Kashmir paid required attention towards getting sufficient preparedness in place to deal with the situation like that which was faced by several States of the country for two consecutive days”.
Trending Now
E-Paper
Follow our WhatsApp channel