KARACHI: Power supply has been restored to at least 95 percent areas of Karachi, according to a spokesman of K-Electric. He said nominal technical faults will be removed soon in the remaining 5 percent areas.
Earlier, parts of Pakistan including Sindh, Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, federal capital Islamabad, and some areas of Punjab plunged into complete darkness after a major technical fault struck the national grid here on Saturday night.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif took notice of the power breakdown and directed to restore the power supply at the earliest.
Talking to a private TV channel, State Minister for Power and Water Abid Sher Ali apologised and assured that measures will be taken up to preempt the likes of crises in future.
Five hours after the blackout, the power was completely restored in KPK including Peshawar and efforts are afoot to for phased restoration in Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore.
“The power outage was caused after an extra high-tension wire tripped, K-Electric spokesman Usama Qureshi told Samaa soon after the power failure.
Qureshi also clarified that K-Electric was not responsible for the breakdown.
“We have reports that entire Sindh is facing the blackout,” Qureshi added.
According to sources in Ministry of Water & Ministry, engineers were racing against time to fix the crisis.
In Karachi, dozens of grid stations tripped offline, plunging at least 90 per cent of the city into darkness. Other cities and towns in Sindh also reported complete power outage.
In most of Balochistan, including Quetta, there was no power supply.
Several Punjab cities including Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Bahawlpur, Bahawalnagar, Rahim Yar Khan, Murree Multan and Lahore are plunged into darkness.
Reportedly, 600 megawatt power supply from Muzaffargarh Thermal Power Station was suspended after loud explosions inside the plant. Sources said that so loud were the blasts that local residents came running out of their houses to see what hell had broken loose in their town.
The Electricity has also been restored in Rawalpindi, Islamabad. Around 46 percents areas in Lahore electricity has been restored.
The tripping of Guddu power plant’s transmission lines affected the 500KW power line from the national grid, forcing Jamshoro and Bin Qasim power stations to shut down.
As many as 17 districts in Baluchistan suffered a sudden power breakdown.
According to Quetta Electric Supply Company (QESCO) officials, the transmission lines from Guddu to Quetta were tripped.
QESCO officials said, 220KW transmission line was abruptly suspended. The other districts include Pishin, Khuzdar, Mastung, Kalat, Sibi, Bolan and other adjoining areas.
Federal State Minister for Water and Power Abid Sher Ali said that transmission lines in Balochistan’s Nasirabad district were blown up by a bomb which caused the electricity crises.
Around 70 per cent of Karachi was in darkness after a sudden power failure struck the country’s economic hub.
The report said that power production from Jamshoro power plant has been decreased to 170mw from 570mw.
Similarly, power generation from Muzaffargarh plant after a decrease of 700mw was 360mw only.
Also, power production from HUBCO and Kapco after a decrease of 1300mw stood at 1051mw. Due to acute shortage of furnace oil, power shortfall has stood above 6700mw in the country.
According to the power ministry’s report, demand of electricity has surged to 14000mw, while the generation has reduced to only 7,000mw.
Sources in National Transmission & Despatch Company (NTDC) said that this chain reaction or somewhat domino effect of ‘power failure’ was actually set into motion after Balochistan’s sprawling Uch-1 and Uch-2 Power Stations tripped offline at around 11:56.
They also added it was not the first time that both the plants had gone down triggering nationwide failure.
According to sources in NTDC, a full restoration of electricity supply may take at least two hours.
Experts say tripping or power-system protection is aimed at protection of electrical power systems from faults through the isolation of faulted parts from the rest of the electrical network.
The objective of a protection scheme is to keep the power system stable by isolating only the components that are under fault, whilst leaving as much of the network as possible still in operation.
