Less than a month after a major grid collapse that plunged northern parts of the country into darkness, a breakdown at the Madras Atomic Power Station (MAPS), Kalpakkam, on Sunday triggered a minor power scarcity scare in the state. Following the outage, which occurred at 1.15am, power supply to the state from the central pool has been stopped. "Though state is entitled for 330 MW from the central pool, we have been getting only 230 MW.
Now that too has been stopped," a senior Tamil Nadu Electricity Board (TNEB) official told. According to officials, it will take at least three days to restore the supply from MAPS. The TNEB official said if the problem continued for more than three days, the state was in for a power crisis. "In spite of the southwest monsoon being a failure, we are able to handle the situation with wind energy, which was 4,000 MW as on Sunday," said the official. However, TNEB officials are wary of banking on wind energy completely.