Karachi’s power outage situation to improve from next year, says KE

As the city of Karachi once again faces the power outage issue, the city only power utility provider K-Electric has said that the power situation of the city would improve next year with the arrival of new LNG power plant.

A statement issued by the spokesperson of KE said that the company has five power plants out of which four are running on gas, while the remaining one runs on furnace oil which generates one thousand megawatts of electricity from it.

The spokesman said that the gas power plants were facing challenges and the Sui Southern Gas Company SSGC could provide a better response to the improvement in gas but we try to keep the plant running.

The spokesperson added that load shedding was taking place where it was needed, the LNG power plant would come next year and this situation would not remain the same next year. With the number of load-shedding hours rising KE has put the blame on SSGC for the ongoing issue of gas pressure.

While the quantity of the required gas remained available, decreased pressure led to reduced production of electricity. This gas pressure issue created a supply gap of 400 megawatts at a time when demand was high.

The pressure of the gas supplied to KE’s power generation plants was low due to which various gas-fired plants at Korangi and SITE were not able to operate at their optimum capacity despite remaining fully available. The generation would be increased as soon as the gas supply at the desired pressure was available. KE’s furnace-oil-fired power plants were fully functional at this time.