By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: A massive power breakdown in Pakistan on Thursday left major cities, including the commercial hub Karachi, without electricity for hours.
The Ministry of Energy says an “accidental fault“ in the transmission system caused the breakdown of 8,000 megawatts.
“Several power plants in the south are tripping in phases due to an accidental fault in the country’s southern transmission system. As a result, there have been disruptions in the supply of electricity to the country’s south,” the ministry said in a tweet.
The major power breakdown left the country’s largest and richest city, Karachi, without electricity and brought much of normal life to a standstill. The outage forced shops, hospitals and businesses to turn to back-up generators as the lights went out, including those in the provincial assembly.
Energy Minister Khurram Dastgir Khan confirmed at a hurriedly convened news conference that the shutdown was caused by a “fault” in two 500kv lines in southern Pakistan early Thursday morning.
Khan was hopeful in fully restoring electricity by tonight, and said power had begun returning to parts of southern Punjab.
“This morning at 9:16am, our two 500kv lines in the south developed technical fault. I am not calling it an accident yet, because an inquiry has yet to be conducted. As a result the country’s southern region saw an electricity blackout,” Khan told the news conference.
“Our first priority was to isolate Karachi from it, and we were successful in doing so and we isolated Karachi from it by 9:45. By isolate, I mean that the 1,000MW that we provide to Karachi daily, was cut. But KE’s system is independently operational and is supplying electricity to [parts of] the city.”
He parts of Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur and Quetta, and partially in Multan and Faisalabad experienced power breakdowns.
Khan said the power plants that were shut down will take hours to restart. These include coal plants, Thar coal plants and nuclear plants in Karachi, wherever there has been tripping, plants are being restarted according to their technical specifications.
Pakistan has experienced several nationwide power breakdowns in the past, blamed on the country’s fragile distribution system. Power cuts running eight to 12 hours each day on average have crippled an economy already wrestling high current account deficit and falling exports.
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