Is this the world's biggest power cut? Chaos strikes for a second day running as over 600 million people endure blackout in India

By JILL REILLY

In the dark: An Indian vegetable vendor in Calcutta waits for customers in candlelight during the massive power failure

A massive power failure has hit India for a second day running, leaving more than half the country without power.
It was caused when three regional power grids collapsed, meaning over 600 million people are without power.
Hundreds of miners were trapped underground in the eastern state of West Bengal when the lifts failed, metro services were stopped temporarily in the capital and hundreds of trains were held up nationwide.

Power out: An Indian man prepares a meal as others sit at a roadside shop on a dark street near a railway station in Allahabad

'The north, northeastern and the eastern grids are down but we are working and we will have them restored shortly,' Naresh Kumar, said a spokesman at the Powergrid Corporation of India Ltd.
Federal Power Minister Sushilkumar Shinde told reporters that the monster outage, which struck around 1:00 pm (0730 GMT) in the middle of the working day, was caused by states drawing power 'beyond their permissible limits.'

Difficult conditions: Employees of the Revenue office work with the help of candles during a power cut in Siliguri

There appeared to have been a domino effect, with the northern grid drawing too heavily on the eastern grid which in turn led the northeastern grid to collapse.
'Half the country is without power. It's a situation totally without precedent,' said Vivek Pandit, an energy expert at the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry.

Failure: Hundreds of miners were trapped underground in the eastern state of West Bengal when the lifts

Power was gradually flickering back in some areas several hours after the crisis struck, but was not expected to be fully restored until later in the day.
In New Delhi, the metro train system came to a standstill and traffic lights were out, causing chaos for a second day after a failure on the northern grid on Monday which caused the nation's worst outage in more than a decade.

Chaos: Streets are packed in heavy traffics following the power outage. India's energy crisis spread over half the country when both its eastern and northern electricity grids collapsed, leaving 600 million people without power in one of the world's biggest-ever blackouts

'Drivers of all the metro trains have been asked to stop at the stations. No passengers will be allowed in the metro station until power is restored,' said a spokeswoman for the network which carries two million people a day.
The city's hospitals and airports, accustomed to the regular outages caused by load-shedding, said they had switched to generators and back-up systems to keep their operations running normally.

Working hard: Commuters work on their laptops as they wait for the bus to arrive at a bus stop during a power-cut at Noida

About 400 trains on the extensive national railway network were affected by the outage, a spokesman for the railways explained, with all operations stopped in Uttar Pradesh.
With nearly 200 million people, this one state alone has a population bigger than Brazil's.
In the east, the massive city of Kolkata went without power as did the surrounding state of West Bengal as the eastern grid, which supplies five states, failed under the stress of over-demand.
'This is the worst power crisis in the region. We were supplying power to the northern grid and this power sharing has led to the collapse,' said West Bengal Power Minister, Manish Gupta.



source: dailymail