India's worst grid failure blamed on insufficient rainfall

Grid frequency dropped below 50hz leading grids to collapse, a source said.

India faced one of the worst power grid failure anywhere in the world. According to Ashutosh Pandey, CEO of Emergent Ventures, India-based clean energy solution provider, on first day Northern grid failed, and on next day three grid collapsed.

He said that while grid was made online in a short period of time, this kind of collapse shows urgent need to promote investments into power sector.

"Growing Indian economy demands huge power supply, however not much capacity addition has taken place to meet his demand. Many large scale power projects are stuck due to problems such lack of timely government approvals, coal availability, environmental issues. This has led to huge demand supply gap," he said. 

"This year during summers rains haven’t been sufficient leading to lower power generation from hydro power plants, also demand shot up due to high temperature during this time of the year. This has led to grid frequency dropping below 50 hz leading grid to collapse," he added.

"India power sector is grappling with some serious issues like lack of capacity addition, low investments, high level of subsidies in power sector leading poor financial health of state utilities. India needs urgent and aggressive investments into power sector including augmenting new power projects capacity, investments in transmission & distribution systems, adopting smart grids as well as strong policy actions to remove subsidies and other market barriers to ensure such tripping don’t happen in future," he added.