• Second Indian outage in two days cuts power to more than 600 million people

    Trains and subways ground to a halt as more than 600 million people in India faced a blackout after half the national power grid shut down. Experts say the outdated grid cannot keep up with the country's energy needs. NBC's Jim Maceda reports.

    By NBC News and wire reports

    Updated at 11:10 a.m. ET: NEW DELHI -- Half of India's 1.2 billion people were without power Tuesday as the grids covering 19 states broke down, the second major blackout in as many days.

    Stretching from Assam, near China, to the Himalayas and the northwestern deserts of Rajasthan, the outage was the worst to hit India in more than a decade and embarrassed the government, which has failed to build up enough power capacity to meet soaring demand.

    The power loss includes grid failures in northern, eastern and northeastern India.

    A power outage in India has left more than 600 million people without electricity in one of the world's biggest-ever blackouts. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.

    "Even before we could figure out the reason for yesterday's failure, we had more grid failures today," said R. N. Nayak, chairman of the state-run Power Grid Corporation. 

    By the afternoon rush hour, only about 40 percent of power was back up. Electricity had not been restored to all of the sweltering capital, New Delhi, and streets were clogged with commuters trying to get home.


    "It's certainly shameful. Power is a very basic amenity and situations like these should not occur," said Unnayan Amitabh, 19, an intern with HSBC bank in New Delhi, as he was giving up on the underground train system and flagging down an auto-rickshaw to get home.

    "They (politicians) talk about big ticket reforms but can't get something as essential as power supply right," Amitabh said.

    Temperatures in New Delhi have been about average for this time of year, hovering in the 90s with some rain. But the rains from the June-September monsoon season, which is the primary source of irrigation for most of India's farmlands, have been about 20 percent below average up to this point, according to The Economic Times, India's top financial paper.

    Among the states hit hard are agricultural areas such as wheat-belt Punjab and Uttar Pradesh in the Ganges plains, which has a larger population than Brazil. With less rain to irrigate crops, more farmers resort to electric pumps to draw water from wells.

    Rajesh Kumar Singh / AP

    Heavy traffic clogged streets in central New Delhi, India, on Tuesday following power outages and rain.

    Dozens die as blaze engulfs overnight train in India

    Miners trapped
    Two hundred miners were stranded in three deep coal shafts in the state of West Bengal when their electric elevators stopped working. Eastern Coalfields Limited official Niladri Roy said workers at the mines, one of which is 3,000 feet deep, were not in danger and were being taken out.

    Train stations in Kolkata were swamped and traffic jammed the streets after government offices closed early in the dilapidated coastal city of 5 million people.

    The power failed in some major city hospitals and office buildings had to fire up diesel generators.

    By mid-evening, services had been restored on the New Delhi metro system. 

    "At one level it is not all that dramatic because most people do have backups because our power system is prone to breakdowns. What is dramatic today is that it has happened across the country," Himangshu Watts, the energy editor for The Economic Times told NBC News.

    "In big cities like Delhi all the hospitals will have backup generation. ... What I'm concerned about (is) what would happen in ... surgery in a small town," he said.

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    Power cuts at major hospitals
    Nineteen of India's 28 states with a total population of more than 600 million people suffered outages on Tuesday, India's NDTV said, with the lights out even at major hospitals in Kolkata.

    Power Minister Sushilkumar Shinde blamed the system collapse on some states drawing more than their share of electricity from the overstretched grid. Asia's third-largest economy suffers a peak-hour power deficit of about 10 percent, dragging on economic growth.

    "This is the second day that something like this has happened. I've given instructions that whoever overdraws power will be punished," Shinde said.

    A staffer at the Indian Ministry of Power told NBC News that Tuesday's outage, which occurred just after 2 p.m. (4:30 a.m. ET), was still being repaired.

    Rajesh Kumar Singh / AP

    Commuters wait for buses outside a subway station in New Delhi on Tuesday after the second major power outage in two days disrupted services in India's capital.

    On Monday, India was forced to buy extra power from the tiny neighboring kingdom of Bhutan to help it recover from that blackout, which hit more than 300 million people.

    Creaky infrastructure
    Power shortages and a creaky road and rail network have also weighed heavily on the country's efforts to industrialize. Grappling with the slowest economic growth in nine years, India recently scaled back a target to pump $1 trillion into infrastructure over the next five years.

    Full coverage of international news on NBCNews.com

    Major industries have dedicated power plants or large diesel generators and are shielded from outages -- but the inconsistent supply hits investment and disrupts small businesses.

    High consumption of heavily subsidized diesel by farmers and businesses has fueled a gaping fiscal deficit that the government has vowed to tackle to restore confidence in the economy. But the poor monsoon season means a subsidy cut is politically difficult.

    NBC staff, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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  • Massive India blackout leaves 300 million without power

    Rajesh Kumar Singh / AP

    Passengers sit in a train and wait for power to be restored at a railway station in New Delhi on Monday.

    By NBC News and wire services

    NEW DELHI - Grid failure left more than 300 million people without power in New Delhi and much of northern India for hours on Monday in the worst blackout for more than a decade, highlighting chronic infrastructure woes holding back Asia's third-largest economy.

    The lights in Delhi and seven states went out in the early hours, leaving the capital's workers sweltering overnight and then stranded at metro stations in the morning rush hour as trains were canceled.

    Electricity supplies were restored to Delhi and much of Uttar Pradesh, a state with more people than Brazil, by midday (1:30 a.m. ET). But the states of Rajasthan, Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir were still without full power in the early evening.

    Power Minister Sushilkumar Shinde said all power would be restored within hours.

    Power shortages and a creaky road and rail network have weighed heavily on the country's efforts to industrialize. Grappling with the slowest economic growth in nine years, Delhi recently scaled back a target to pump $1 trillion into infrastructure over the next five years.

    Inconsistent supply
    Major industries have dedicated power plants or large diesel generators and are shielded from outages -- but the inconsistent supply affects investment and disrupts small businesses. Office blocks, hotels and large apartment buildings all use backup diesel generators.

    Chaos reigned on Delhi's always-hectic roads on Monday as stop lights failed and thousands of commuters abandoned the metro. Water pumping stations ran dry.

    "First, no power since 2 in the morning, then no water to take a shower and now the metro is delayed by 13 minutes after being stuck in traffic for half an hour," said 32-year-old Keshav Shah, who works 20 miles outside the capital.

    "As if I wasn't dreading Monday enough, this had to happen," Shah added.

    Dozens die as blaze engulfs overnight train in India

    The government's top economic planning adviser, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, said the blackout may have been caused by a mix of coal shortages and other problems on the grid.

    "I've no doubt that this is the area that we need to show improved performance in, and we also need show a clear sense of what we are doing to prevent it," Ahluwalia told Reuters at his office, where power had been restored some hours earlier.

    All thermal plants under the northern grid had failed, sources told The Times of India.

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    "Delhi is also getting emergency hydel power from Bhutan on a priority basis along with power from the PM's residence and AIIMS," which is the acronym for the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, the newspaper quoted an unnamed source as saying.

    Weak monsoon
    He said the grid was better networked now than five years ago and power sharing was more common.

    But blackouts lasting up to eight hours a day are frequent in much of the country and have sparked angry protests on the industrial fringes of Delhi this summer, the hottest in years.

    More coverage of South and Central Asia on NBCNews.com

    At least 200 trains were canceled with some stranded. Authorities made restoring services to hospitals and transport systems a priority.

    Shinde blamed the outage on an incident near Agra, the home of the Taj Mahal, without giving details. He said repairs were being carried out fast compared to a similar grid outage in the United States four years ago.

    "In 2008, there was a power failure in the USA. Their Federal Energy Regulatory Commission asked India for assistance and it took four days to restore the power," he told reporters.

    India suffers a peak hour power deficit of about 10 percent. It has been made worse this year by a weak monsoon, driving demand from farmers pumping more water from wells.

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    The outage forced the shutdown of a nuclear power plant at Rawatbhata in the desert state of Rajasthan. It will take about 48 hours to restart. Hydroelectric plants in the Himalayas and thermal power stations in the wheat belt of Punjab and Haryana were slowly returning to normal.

    Rising demand
    India has the world's fifth-largest coal reserves and relies on it for two-thirds of its power generation. Wrangles over land and environmental clearances and failure to invest in new mines and technology have held back coal output as demand rises.

    India frets over delayed monsoon damaging crops

    Officials at Delhi's international airport said flights were unaffected. Delhi's private power company, BSES, said northern India last not suffered such a major outage since 2001.

    "This kind of breakdown shows that the system needs some big overhaul to increase credibility and increase the confidence in the system of India," said Jagannadhan Thunuguntla, equity head at Delhi-based brokerage SMC Capital.

    "More homework needs to be done," Thunuguntla said.

    Reuters contributed to this report.

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