Mumbai blackout: Tata Power, BEST play blame game

A day after many parts of Mumbai experienced one of the worst outages in the recent historyTata Power Company and staterun electricity distribution company BEST on Wednesday traded charges against each otherSeveral parts of the metropolis were without power for hours together yesterday after one of the electricity generating units Unit 5 at Tata Powers Trombay plant tripped at around 945 am yesterday forcing the company to switch off several feedersTata Power claimed if BEST had procured power from the oil and gasfired 500MW Unit 6 the distribution company would have been able to meet the shortage after the tripping and the city would have not faced loadsheddingA Ganpati mandal in Sion Koliwada performed puja with the help of a Scooty headlight on Tuesday after several parts of south and central Mumbai faced massive power outages PICPRADEEP DHIVARSpeaking to reporters BEST General Manager Om Prakash Gupta said We do not know whether there was actual tripping or was it a forced one Tata Power has got the licence to distribute electricity in the city limits where we currently have a monopoly It is their responsibility to supply power to us since we do not generate electricity which they failed to doYesterday BEST was more critical of Tata Power The lackadaisical attitude of Tata Power Company along with ulterior motives of poaching our consumers could be the scheme behind the current fiasco BEST had said in a statement issued last nightAccording to Tata Power had it been running the gasfired Unit 6 of 500 mw then it could have met the suply shortage caused by tripping of Unit 5 which is coalfiredWe had activated initialisation activities of the 500MW Unit 6 which we have kept on cold standby with BESTs consent The staterun discom told us that they would not buy power from Unit6 since it is costly and so we have not been generating powerIf the plant was running the city would not have faced loadshedding after the other unit tripped Tata Power Companys TPC MD Anil Sardana told reporters here todayHe also said TPC procured power from its hydroelectric plant as well as activated initialisation of its cold standby Unit 6 which runs on oil and gas to meet the shortfallHowever BEST has claimed that even after the failure of Unit 5 it could have met the citys load demand of 723 MW through bilateral purchase and a standby agreementDue to the failure of the unit there was non availability of 225 MW of power from the TPC We need not to buy power from Unit 6 since it is very costly We will have to pay Rs 13 per unit to buy power from Unit6 and we dont want to pass that burden onto our customersSo we have asked TPC to not to produce power from that unit BESTs Gupta said todayMeanwhile the state government has ordered a probe into the outage towards this the government has set up a panel under the state energy secretary Ajoy Mehta The committee has to submit its report to the government in six weeksGupta said TPCs claim about cold standby is totally false and misleading since the power to operate the grid elements including Unit 6 is not strictly under BESTs purview since power generated from this unit is not a part of the power purchase agreement that which BEST signed with TPC Tata Power had proposed conversion of Unit 6 to a coal fired plant which it has not been able to do because of opposition from locals Sardana said We have received environmental clearance for the conversion but what is needed is political will to do so They claim that coalbased generation will lead to pollution but carbon emission from oil is much higher than coal Oil is costly and the governments stand on gas for power plants makes it difficult for us to generate electricity through these fuels So we want to convert it to a coalfired plant Sardana said The company would have to invest around Rs 800 crore for the conversion which would take around 18 months Sardana said adding that there is a need to enhance the transmission system which failed to draw additional 300 MW from external sources that resulted in load shedding BEST however said it is Tata Powers responsibility to ensure generation and transmission TPC has not provided sufficient redundancy for generation and transmission which led to the present situation of forced loadshedding Gupta said