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Power secretary P. Umashankar (right) with chief and principal secretaries of states affected by the power grid failure in New Delhi on Monday. (PTI)
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New Delhi, Aug. 6: An independent audit of the country’s transmission grids is on the cards following last week’s massive power cuts in the north, east and Northeast.
Power minister Veerappa Moily said the third party audit would be completed in three months, and the process monitored by the regional power committees.
Moily, who assumed charge amid the massive grid collapse last week, said his ministry was considering “island” schemes — having dedicated transmission lines for essential services such as railways and hospitals.
He was speaking to reporters after a meeting with the chief ministers and representatives from various northern states and the Chandigarh union territory.
In the meeting, the members resolved to put in place adequate protection systems to ensure integrated operation of the national and regional grids in adherence with the Indian electricity grid code.
It was also decided that all the utilities should adopt good operation and maintenance practices and would be subject to random checks by the regional committees.
India has five electricity grids — northern, eastern, northeastern, southern and western. All of these are inter-connected, except the southern grid.
Moily said states would prepare long, medium and short-term plans on the procurement of power as well as demand management.
The defence plans of states, in case of grid failures, should include islanding schemes, special protection and automatic demand management schemes. Grid defence planning is an extremely important part of grid operations and the states must attach priority to this, Moily added.
Meanwhile, the expert panel, which is probing the failure of power grids on two consecutive days, is likely to submit its report by August 16.
Moily said the panel had been broad-based to arrive at a comprehensive reason behind the incident, including cyber attack.
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