KARACHI: Citizens to brave more electricity shutdowns
By Our Staff Reporter
KARACHI, Feb 27: The Karachi Electric Supply Corporation on Monday shutdown one of its power generating units in Bin Qasim power plant for maintenance and started carrying out load shedding for an hour on rotation basis after dividing the city into four zones.
The load shedding was carried out in SITE and its adjoining localities where people did not know about purpose of power failure and they started making calls at the utility complaint centre.
KESC spokesman said that one of the six power generating units in Bin Qasim was shutdown as its power generation capacity degraded. The unit having 210MW capacity of power generation was producing only 150MW, and it became necessary to close it for maintenance and repair. The closure of the unit would cause shortage of 100MW power as the city needed 1,915MW while the available power was 1,815MW.
He said that load shedding was planned from 6pm to midnights, which were the peak hours of power consumption in the city. The city, having 53 grids, was divided into four zones and each zone would be affected after an interval of three to four days. He said that the load shedding would be abandoned as soon as the maintenance was completed.
He asked the consumers to take extreme care of utilizing the electricity especially during the peak hours. “If people exercise care, the KESC may abandon power load shedding,” he added.
