A major fault in the 400 KV high-tension transmission lines of Maharashtra State Electricity Transmission Company Limited (MSETCL) at Chakan and Lonikand substations disrupted power supply to the twin cities of Pune and Pimpri Chinchwad in the early hours of Wednesday.
The power failure that started at about 5 am continued for more than six hours. Supply was restored around 11 am in some areas, and, by 11.30 am, almost 80 per cent of the city had its electricity restored, MSETCL officials said.
“From 4.30 am, there has been tripping at five points in the tower cable lines. Our engineers are working on a war footing to identify the faults,” Sachin Talewar, chief engineer of Pune zone of Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Limited (MSEDCL), the power distributor, told The Indian Express.
Jayant Weekey, Pune zone chief engineer of MSETCL, said the fault arose due to bad weather. “Due to heavy fog, the creepage distance of the insulator gets reduced to a certain level,” he said.
The creepage distance is an important parameter of the insulator that affects the safe operation of transmission lines.
“During weather conditions like we have these days, the fog surrounds the transmission line. Hence, the distance maintained in the insulator reduces, leading to the development of a short circuit path. This can lead to faults and tripping. Generally, whenever one transmission line trips, other lines also get overloaded. In this case, overloading to other lines led to faults. However, phase-wise restoration is underway and more than 80 per cent areas now have power supply,” Weekey said.
Talewar said the first problem was observed at 4.30 am when the 400 KV transmission lines at Lonikand and Chakan substations tripped.
“Due to heavy fog, sometimes there may be dust particles over conductor and can reduce the conductive path. This, at times, can lead to tripping of the power transmission lines. At times, the insulator in the line can get punctured. Sometimes, the dust can be accumulated over the insulator in the line at the transmission tower. Fog can make it wet leading to reduction in the conductive path,” he said.
Water supply, traffic management and other services faced disruptions because of the outage. Water supply in both Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad has been affected due to the power snap.
The areas of Sinhagad Road, Satara road and Solapur road will be affected as the water pumping station of Vadgaon is shut due to power supply disruption, said Annirudh Pawaskar, incharge of the PMC water supply department.
But water supply to other areas of the city, mainly the central part, has not been affected. However, there are complaints from citizens that they are not able to lift water from underground water tanks to overhead water tanks of buildings due to the power cut, he said.
The power outage has also badly affected the system of traffic signals across the city. Deputy Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Rahul Shrirame said, “All the signals are being manned manually because of the outage. Almost all of our strength of traffic police personnel and officials has been deployed at the traffic junctions. Additional strength is being deployed.”
Traffic police said some traffic squares with heavy volume may face some snarls during the peak hours.
📣 Join our Telegram channel (The Indian Express) for the latest news and updates
For all the latest Pune News, download Indian Express App.