India suffered its second huge, crippling power failure in two days Tuesday, depriving as much as half of the vast country, up to 600 million people, of electricity and disrupting transport networks for several hours.
The New York Times reports that Tuesday afternoon’s outage is the largest outage ever on record, effecting the equivalent of most of Europe’s population or more than the population on North and Central America combined.
India’s power minister hasn’t specified the root cause of the problem, though he says there are problems with the country’s power grid. Some are speculating that states are using more power than the grid can handle, causing the outage.
Sporadic power outages are the norm in most of India, where local power supplies regularly cut out for several hours a day.
The first power grid collapse, on Monday, was the country's worst blackout in a decade. It affected seven states in northern India that are home to more than 350 million people.
But Tuesday's failure was even larger, hitting eastern and northeastern areas as well. Both blackouts cut power in the Indian capital, New Delhi, and left people sweltering in high heat and humidity.
Power was largely restored as of 9:30 p.m., several hours after the affected electricity grids collapsed, the Power Grid Corporation of India reported on its website.
India’s power minister hasn’t specified the root cause of the problem, though he says there are problems with the country’s power grid. Some are speculating that states are using more power than the grid can handle, causing the outage.
Sporadic power outages are the norm in most of India, where local power supplies regularly cut out for several hours a day.
