Mumbai returns to normal after worst power failure

Bloomberg

Power supply was restored in most parts of India’s financial capital after its worst blackout in decades disrupted transport networks and briefly hit trading volume in bond markets.
Mumbai, home to India’s biggest stock exchanges, financial regulators and the central bank, witnessed a power failure at around 10 am local time. Power tripping — or an overload in the circuit that forces the system to shut down automatically — was the reason for the grid’s collapse, according to local power utility Tata Power.
BSE Ltd and National Stock Exchange of India Ltd continued to function normally. But trading volumes in the fixed-income market dropped as many traders, sheltering from the coronavirus pandemic at home, failed to complete trades. Some rail services were halted, while airport operations and hospitals remained unaffected.
The city of 20 million people accounts for about 6% of the $2.9 trillion economy. While Mumbai has largely been immune to the daily power outages that plague large swathes of the nation, a long and widespread blackout in the capital of India’s most industrialised state would make it harder for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to revive an economy that shrank 24% in the quarter ended June.
“In my 18 years in Mumbai,
I haven’t come across such a widespread disruption right
in the middle of the busiest
time for equity markets,” said Chokkalingam G, chief investment officer at Equinomics Research & Advisory in Mumbai, whose home still didn’t have power at 4 pm. “Especially during a pandemic a recurrence of such an event isn’t good.”
Power supply was restored to essential services such as trains and hospitals by about 2 pm, according to local authorities. The city has seen rising coronavirus infections. The country had experienced a major power outage in 2012, impacting 360 million people due to a grid failure while a glitch at a power station of Tata Power in 2014 led to disruption in parts of Mumbai.
Modi is seeking to spend about $350 billion in energy infrastructure by March 2025, most of it in building conventional and non-conventional power plants along with transmission and distribution networks to fulfill his pledge for providing clean energy by 2025.