KARACHI: Major power breakdown as two grids catch fire
By Arman Sabir
KARACHI, May 24: Power supply to a major part of the city that houses the Governor’s House, the CM’s House and a large number of important government offices, was disrupted on Wednesday morning after the Queen’s Road grid station caught fire.
It was the second incident of its kind in 10 days as fire had broken out at the Gizri grid station on May 14.
In the fresh incident, fire broke out at around 9:38am and caused tripping of the 220kv circuit of the Bin Qasim Power Station. As a result, power supply to Queen’s Road, Lalazar, Elander Road, Clifton, Defence, Gizri, Garden, Old Town, and Jacob Lines grid stations was suspended.
The areas affected by the suspension of power supply included Old Town, I. I. Chundrigar Road, the Governor’s House, the CM’s House, KESC head office on Abdullah Haroon Road, Defence Housing Society, Clifton, Frere, Gizri, Eidgah, Burnes Road and Saddar.
Four fire tenders of the city district government and another seven of the KPT rushed to the scene and extinguished the fire by 11:30am.
According to the fire fighters, no precautionary measures have been taken by the KESC at the Queens Road and Lalazar grid stations which are adjacent to each other and where drums of furnace oil were seen lying on the floor all around transformers.
They said that fire broke out simultaneously at the two grids located at a distance of just 100 yards from each other. They said that a blast was also heard before the fire broke out and the Bomb Disposal Squad was called in. However, the BDS team found no explosive material at the grids.
A spokesman for the KESC said that a fire broke out in the switch yard and burnt an 11kv line, causing tripping of the 220kv circuit at the Bin Qasim Power Station.
He said that the damage caused by the fire had been estimated at about Rs7 million as an 11kv line, 22 feeders and the switch room were damaged. A power transformer of 30mva was also partially damaged, he added.
The spokesman said that a new transformer would be installed at the grid as it would time to get the damaged one repaired.
About possibility of sabotage, he said that at this initial stage, the fire seemed to have been caused by overloading and overheating of lines. “An internal inquiry has been ordered to ascertain the cause,” he added.
He said that the Gizri, Defence, Garden and Jacob Lines grid stations had been energised at around 10:38am to resume an interrupted supply, i.e. one hour on and one hour off, and this exercise was continued till 4:20pm.
The Elander Road and Clifton grids were energized by 4:20pm and the Old Town grid was normalized by 5pm.
However, the Queen’s Road and Lalazar grids could not be energized owing to which the areas connected to these grids remained without power till late Wednesday night.
The spokesman said that KESC engineers and other staff members were at work and hopefully, the supply would be restored to these areas in the small hours of Thursday.
He said that there were 102 power transformers in the city and were supposed to take 60 per cent as maximum approved load on each of them. However, more than 20 of these transformers were taking 100 per cent load and the remaining ones 80 per cent load, he claimed.
He said that the supply from Wapda on Wednesday stood at 400-580 megawatts.
The power generating unit, having 87-100mw capacity, which had gone out of order on Monday at the Korangi Thermal Power Station, could not be repaired as yet, forcing the power utility to resort to loadshedding across the city on a rotation basis. A 90-minute loadshedding is being applied due to the problem.
COMPLAINTS: Consumers in different areas, while complaining of repeated and prolonged power failures in their respective localities, have expressed the view that a deliberate attempt was being made to make the KESC privatization a failure.
KARACHI, May 24: Power supply to a major part of the city that houses the Governor’s House, the CM’s House and a large number of important government offices, was disrupted on Wednesday morning after the Queen’s Road grid station caught fire.
