Western load dispatch centre conducts workshop for Black Start procedure with SSNNL

SSNNL Chief Engineer
R V Patel told Newsline: “WRLDC conducted a workshop with the Narmada Control Authority (NCA) after the Power Grid Corporation of India Limited decided to nationalise the power grid system. Earlier, the power grid system was divided on regional basis, North, East, South and West. Now, there are two power grids, the North, East and West, known as NEW and the South.”

He added: “There will be a problem if there is a failure in a system, as the entire grid will be affected. The workshop conducted by WRLDC was to discuss on ways to synchronise the entire power grid system in case of a Black Start.”

Normally, the electric power used within the plant is provided from the station’s own generators. Often a transmission line is installed to provide service power to the station if all the main generators are shut down.

However, during a wide-area outage, this off-site power supply is not available. In the absence of a grid power, a so-called Black Start needs to be performed to restart the power grid into operation.

A hydroelectric station needs very little initial power to start (just enough to open the intake gates), and can put a large block of power on line very quickly to allow start-up of fossil-fuelled or nuclear power stations.