How to prevent a repeat of Oct 12 outage? Key meet today

A virtual hearing is to be conducted by the Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission MERC on Wednesday regarding last weeks power outage and sparks are expected to fly The MERC wants to know what went wrong on October 12 and has summoned all stakeholders including private utilities one of which has been blamed by the stateowned company for delayed response in mitigating the unprecedented failureThe MERC seems interested in finding out the actual reasons and stopping the blame gameTwo independent enquiries have already been instituted since the failureThe state government has asked its experts to probe while the Union Power Ministry sent its team last week State electricity transmission company MahaTransco has blamed Tata Power for delayed response in restoring generationFamilies emerged out of their homes to escape the heat amid no power PicNimesh DaveApart from technical and human error energy minister Dr Nitin Raut hasnt denied the possibility of sabotage a charge that rocked the power and political sectorSources said the state companies mdash for transmission and distribution mdash will not take things lying down and impressed upon the commission that they alone shouldnt be held responsible for failing Mumbai since their stake is much less than the private Tata and Adani and municipal BEST playersThe Commission has received a preliminary report from the Maharashtra State Load Dispatch Center MSLDC regarding the preoutage conditions the sequence of events affected load and status of recoveryTata Power Adani Power and state utilities have also submitted their preliminary findings However more and indepth details will be discussed onWednesdayIslanding systemMERC has specifically asked the companies responsible to let it know whether the citys islanding system operated as envisagedIs it relevant in the changed scenario it has asked the companies which are partners in islanding which came into being a quarter of a century ago and saved the city from blackoutsTata Power had promoted and implemented it It was updated by taking partners in other city power utilitiesThe most debated limited capacity of carrying power from outside Mumbai will also be discussed in the hearingMERC had played a big role in suggesting corrective measures after the 2010 grid failureIt wants to know what action was taken to avoid recurrences It has asked all generation distribution and transmission companies to furnish their individual performance and responses during the October 12 crisis which left people in Mumbai and parts of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region MMR without power for many hours In some areas the outage lasted overnight2No of independent entities probing the incident12Day this month the power outage took placeMaharashtra energy minister raps officersA day ahead of the MERC hearing Dr Nitin Raut took officers of the three state companies to task and threatened action against the erring He held the meeting at the companys Bandra HQ on Tuesday A technical committee is expected to give him a report by this weekendIs the islanding system built only for one private company The population has increased and so has consumption of power in the past so many years What changes have been made to the system in accordance with changing patterns Have the government energy department included not studied similar islanding systems in other international cities he asked and demanded that he be given a report to his queries by SaturdayYou fix responsibility or else I will do it and take punitive action said Raut telling the State Load Dispatch Centre to come clean over Tata Powers allegation that it wasnt instructed about islanding in advance I want to see the officers phone where he sent the text message to Tata Power he asked furtherKeep scrolling to read more newsCatch up on all the latest Mumbai news crime news current affairs and a complete guide from food to things to do and events across Mumbai Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updates MidDay is now on Telegram Click here to join our channel middayinfomedialtd and stay updated with the latest news