India Blackout: 1/3 of India Hit by Power Outage (Video)

by NowPublic Staff | July 31, 2012 at 07:40 am

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Power Grids Fail Across India

A massive series of power outages left roughly one-third of India without electricity on July 31, 2012. 20 out of 28 states were affected in what was the second day of power failures.

The nation's public transport systems are frozen in many areas, and 200 miners are trapped underground. So far, 46 of the trapped miners have been rescued.

The India power outage has affected around 600 million of people, making it the world's largest blackout.

The outages are blamed on individual states drawing too much power from the national grid. Electricity networks are surprisingly delicate: if you draw or add too much in one part of the grid, the whole thing fails. India is no stranger to power outages, so, for individual residents, it was not immediately clear how big this particular outage has been.

By late on Tuesday, officials said the north-eastern grid was fully up and running. The northern grid was running at 75% capacity and the eastern at 40%.

However, at any given time, roughly a third of India's rural population lives without electricity on a full-time basis [Source (pdf)].