Widespread power outages: Southern Punjab, Balochistan and Sindh suffer

ISLAMABAD: A major breakdown in the power system on Thursday due to an accidental fault in southern transmission system, which shut several generation units of 8000MW, badly affected interior Sindh, Balochistan, southern Punjab and Karachi.

The fault occurred around 9.30am at Guddu, after which areas in Hesco, Sepco, Mepco and KE were deprived of electricity.

Initially, Power Division said in a tweet “due to an accidental fault in the country’s southern transmission system, several southern power plants are tripping in phases, which is disrupting the transmission of electricity in southern parts of the country. Ministry of Energy is diligently investigating the cause of the fault and electricity system will be fully restored as soon as possible”.

Later addressing a press conference, Minister for Power, Khurram Dastgir Khan said that an inquiry team had been constituted headed by General Manager, Technical NTDC to investigate the cause. The Committee will submit its report to Power Division within four days on how that accident occurred.

Power ‘fully restored’ across Pakistan after massive outage: energy ministry

The Inquiry team will also comprise GM (Technical Services), NPCC Chief and General Manager (Asset Management) who are neutral and do not have conflict of interest.

According to the Minister, tripping which triggered the breakdown started from Karachi and spread to other parts of the country, adding that three teams are in the field dealing with conductors, repair team and inquiry. He shared preliminary findings of the cause that led to power breakdown: “this morning at 9.16am, faults emerged in two 500KV transmission lines in South, Karachi. I am not calling it an accident yet, because a detailed inquiry is yet to be conducted.”

He said faults surfaced simultaneously in two lines in south of Karachi i.e. NK-1 which evacuates electricity Kanupp 1 and 2 plants and the other line i.e. Jamshoro of K-2 and K-3 which was a surprise which is why an inquiry is being conducted.

The Minister argued that the main success of system is that northern Pakistan’s system remained safe from power shutdown as the fault was limited to southern parts of the country.

He said that those power houses like nuclear power plant, imported coal plant and Thar coal which shut down due to the fault in transmission are now being restored one by one in accordance with their technical specifications.

“We faced a challenge for the time being but we have dealt with it successfully,” the Minister said, adding that disciplinary action would be taken in the light of inquiry report if needed. He said tripping developed near Karachi and moved northward. “There are two lines in Karachi’s south — NK1 and Jamshoro — there was a fault in both concurrently.”

In reply to a question he said “we should offer Namaz-e-Istasqa for political stability in the country so that the government could work to reform the institutions instead of focusing on long marches.”

The Minister said that 1000MW of electricity to KE was disrupted but its own generation system was delivering electricity.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022