Bengaluru: With near-record temperatures persisting over the past few days, the city’s power infrastructure has come under stress.As the searing daytime heat resulted in unusually warm hours late Tuesday night, a line breaker at the 220 kV station in Somanahalli on the city’s outskirts that supplies power to the BWSSB pumping station, witnessed a rare flashover, briefly disrupting power supply to the Cauvery pumping station at Tataguni. It impacted water supply to parts of the city.Engineers said the heat-triggered electrical disruption damaged the B-phase current transformer (CT), leading to oil leakage at the station. BWSSB sources noted that temperatures at Somanahalli touched 37 degrees Celsius Tuesday. A BWSSB engineer confirmed the rarity of the incident, stating, “Even though electrical incidents are common and often unexpected, this kind of event due to heat stress has not occurred before at this site, and our team of engineers acted immediately to fix it.“A technical official involved in the restoration explained: “The incident was due to damage in the breakers, which failed to detect the fault, such as an overload. The flashover created a critical condition with high-voltage arcing that risked nearby equipment and personnel. Oil from the compromised CT leaked due to thermal expansion from surging daytime temperatures, due to sizzling summer conditions. But our personnel were quick to act on it and reduce the intensity of the impact.”The faulted section was isolated, leaked oil was safely drained, and the damaged CT was replaced, another BWSSB engineer said.BWSSB chairperson V Ram Prasath Manohar termed the episode an outcome of extreme weather conditions. “It was an unexpected situation due to extreme weather incidents near Tataguni. But our officials and engineers were quick enough to respond to the problem. Due to the repair work at the site, Cauvery water supply was affected in parts of the city from 12:30pm to 3pm (Wednesday). Subsequently, the system was restored, and the water supply resumed.“(By Nadi Ganadhal)
