New Delhi: All seven generating units at NTPC Limited’s 2,600-MW Korba power station in Chhattisgarh tripped on Friday evening following an electrical fault during the testing of a breaker associated with a Power Grid Corporation of India Limited (Power Grid) bay, according to the state-owned power producer.
The simultaneous tripping brought power generation across the Korba plant to a halt and created what an NTPC official described as a “blackout-like situation” within the generating station. The company said restoration work had been initiated and the units would be brought back into operation in phases.
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The incident occurred at the coal-based power station located in the Darri area of Korba city. The facility comprises three units of 200 MW each and four units of 500 MW each, giving it an aggregate installed capacity of 2,600 MW.
“Due to an electrical fault during testing of the breaker of the PGCIL bay being carried out by PGCIL, all the units of Korba have tripped. The process for revival of all the units is underway and is expected to be completed late in the night,” NTPC public relations officer Ushma Ghosh said in a statement.
Ghosh said the outage affected generation across all seven units. Plant personnel were working to restore the units sequentially, as generating units cannot ordinarily be returned to service simultaneously after a complete shutdown.
NTPC did not immediately disclose how much electricity the plant was generating at the time of the incident, the precise nature of the electrical fault or whether the tripping affected power supply outside the station. Power Grid had also not issued a separate statement on the incident at the time of reporting.
The outage is significant because the failure of a common electrical or evacuation-related system can affect several generating units at once, even when the individual units themselves have not suffered equipment failures. A detailed technical assessment would be required to establish the sequence of events and determine why the fault led to the tripping of the entire station.
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The immediate priority remained the safe restoration of generation. NTPC said it expected the revival process to be completed late on Friday night, though the company had not provided a unit-wise restoration schedule.
NTPC Korba is one of the public sector utility’s major coal-fired generating stations and supplies electricity to multiple beneficiary states through the interconnected power grid.
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