Rahul Mehta Gandhinagar LsCandidate
Reasons behind power outages in Delhi - storm of 30 may has damaged many transmission lines
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Delhi imports power from Haryana, UP etc. The import is done via large trunk wires, which are supported by towers and kept at a height of 50 ft to 200 ft. These wires can be kept underground, but that makes operations very expensive. Even advanced countries like USA keeps them above ground using towers.
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Now 30-may-2014 storm damaged many towers and transmission wires. Delhi peek demand is about 5700 MW and lines are capable of importing about 7000 MW. But due to damage, only 4800 MW can be imported , which creates shortages. And certain points of imports got overused, and they blew off, which further reduced capacity of network to import. So much of crisis is natural, and a small part of it is man made..
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Basically, we need to have more redundancy. Long back , I read about Las Vegas, which imports all its power. Its trunk like have 2 to 3 times more redudency than peak requirement. IOW, even if 60% import points were to fail, then also, whole LV will go on. We are miles away from such redundancy.
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