30 July - 5 August 2012 - orsam

Millions Without Power in North India, Water May Be Next
Tens of millions of people in North India were without power and early morning commutes in Delhi
were thrown into chaos Monday after a massive electrical grid failure. Water supplies may be
seriously disrupted this evening, because of the power problems, officials said.
―We are presently busy at restoring the grid,‖ said S.K. Soonee, chief executive of Power System
Operation, part of state-run Power Grid, which manages the transmission grids in the country. He
said it‘s difficult to say what caused the outage. ―Things should be looking up soon,‖ he said, but
added he didn‘t want to give a specific time frame.
Power was out in the entire state of Rajasthan, population 67 million, for several hours Monday
morning after the grid failure, which happened around 2:30 a.m. Other states affected included Uttar
Pradesh, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Haryana. An estimated 360 million people were affected by
the outage.
Raminder Pal Singh/European Pressphoto AgencyA stranded passenger waited near a halted train at
the railway station in Amritsar, India, on Monday.
A water shortage could be next. Delhi residents are likely to have some water problems this evening,
Sanjam Cheema, a spokeswoman for the Delhi Jal Board, said Monday. The water treatment process
requires power, she said, and Delhi Water Board‘s seven water treatment plants don‘t have a backup
power system, because they require ―hundreds of megawatts‖ to operate.
Some of the board‘s underground reservoirs were also affected because of disturbances in the local
area distribution grid. ―There‘s little one can do,‖ she said. Because water treatment plants ―work 24
hours, even slight disruptions can affect them,‖ she said. The water board can‘t predict how severe
water problems will be, but is trying to keep water tankers on hand, she said.
Power was out in many parts of India‘s capital city early Monday morning, and the Delhi Metro,
which carries almost 2 million passengers a day, was completely down for several hours. Delhi Metro
officials said that by 8:30 a.m. services were at 50 percent of capacity, and they were running
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