Risk of massive Blackout on 5th April

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has asked citizens to turn the lights off in their homes for 9 minutes on Sunday (5 April) starting at 9pm. This is simple gesture for households to follow but the national electricity grid which meets India’s power needs has a lot of work to do maintain reliable power supply during and after this period. India has a baseload power demand of roughly 160 gigawatts (GW) that is 160,000 megawatts (MW).

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In order to maintain the grid’s stability within a certain frequency (48.5- 51.5 hertz) and because Power System Operation Corporation Ltd (POSOCO) don’t have adequate electricity storage mechanisms, the accuracy of these predictions are very important so that power demand can be matched with supply. During this 9 minutes lights out initiative, about 10,000-12,000 MW of power demand is expected to vanish. So POSOCO needs to ramp down electricity supply accordingly during this time block and ramp up again once this 9-minute period is over and the baseload demand returns in full strength. Any missteps in handling this could possibly lead to a high voltage surge, tripping the lines, causing damage to the national grid and an extended power outage.