4 districts face blackout second day in a row

Morung Express News 
Dimapur | September 16 

Dimapur and the adjoining districts of Chümoukedima, Niuland and Peren faced another blackout on September 16. 

Attributed to “grid disturbance,” this was the second day in a row that citizens of the four districts have to face long hours without electricity causing undue distress and inconvenience, further compounded by high summer temperatures.  

Saturday evening’s blackout was reportedly a continuation of the previous night’s problem. The Executive Engineer (Transmission), Dimapur, explained away the previous night’s problem through a press release. As per the release, the problem was with the132/66/33kV Nagarjan sub-station, which failed twice, back to back, on the evening of September 15, the first, at around 6:30 PM and the second at 7:05 PM.  

Supply could be fully restored only at around 12:40 am, September 16. 

It said, “A follow up testing and rectification work was done on September 16 where the 132/33kV 100MVA transformer was put under shutdown for two hours from 11:00 AM to 1:05 PM.” 

However, problem reared again on Saturday evening, as at around 5:38 pm, a “disc insulator” went kaput at the Nagarjan Sub Station “Incomer Circuit 1.” It reportedly overloaded “Circuit 2” resulting in outage of the whole Sub Station effecting power supply to the four aforementioned districts again for the second day. 

On the status of the restoration work, an official of the Department forwarded a message to The Morung Express, which stated, “The Department, while taking up restoration of the damaged Circuit 1 line, is simultaneously initiating steps with the North East Regional Load Dispatch Centre (NERLDC), for charging of Circuit 2, which will enable partial loading of the four districts, till the restoration of the Circuit 1. Inconvenience to our esteemed consumers is deeply regretted.”

It basically implied heavy load-shedding but supply was yet to be restored till around midnight.