DIMAPUR, SEPTEMBER 16: Misery loves company and residents of Dimapur are old acquaintances with this particular variant of torment: baking summer heat accompanied by torturous hours of darkness.
And for the second day in succession, as the creaky and poorly-bandaged Power infrastructure of the State’s hottest district crumbled in the face of overload, it was another round of misery for Dimapurians in the face of prolonged power outage.
At 8.30 p.m., on Saturday, as the power outage entered its fifth hour, the humidity level in Dimapur stood at 85%.
As per the account of Power Department, the puncturing of a disc insulator at the 132kV Nagarjan sub-station incomer circuit-I at 5.38 p.m. on Saturday led to the overloading of circuit-II.
This in turn, caused an outage of the entire sub-station, affecting the supply of Power to four districts: Dimapur, Chümoukedima, Nuiland and Peren.
In an update, the Department informed that it was trying to restore the damaged circuit-I. Simultaneously, it was also in touch with the North Eastern Regional Load Despatch Centre (NERLDC) in Shillong, Meghalaya, to charge the circuit-II.
According to the Department, charging of circuit-II could enable “partial loading of the four districts” till the restoration of the damaged circuit-I. It expressed regret for the inconvenience.
Till the time of filing this report, the supply of Power was yet to be restored.
On September 15 also, residents of Dimapur underwent a similar trial of heat and darkness after a fault at the 132kV transmission line was detected in the evening. Between 6.30 p.m. and 7.05 p.m. on September 15, the line tripped twice, according to the Department.
Also, a press release issued by the Department stated that at 6.30 p.m. on September 15, a disturbance had occurred at the 132/66/33kV Nagarjan sub-station and both the main incomer at 132kV D/C got isolated from the interstate sub-station.
“Subsequent attempts were made by the officers and staff of the Department to restore Power supply but the disturbance persisted and Nagarjan sub-station went blacked out at 19:05 hrs, which has affected power supply to the districts of Dimapur, Chümoukedima, Niuland & Peren.
“On further investigation and diagnostic testing, a transformer relay mal-operation was detected and isolated from circuit Nagarjan sub-station was normalised and power supply restoration was initiated at 23:08 hrs of September 15 and fully restored at 00:40 hrs of September 16”, it stated.
On Saturday, the Department conducted a follow-up testing and rectification work where the 132/33kV 100MVA transformer was shut down for two hours from 11 a.m. to 1.05 p.m.
(Page News Service)
