KARACHI, May 5: The collapse of the KESC’s power generation and distribution system at about 5am on Saturday rendered almost the entire city without electricity most of the day forcing groups of angry and anxious people in many localities to take to the streets.
The breakdown occurred just a few hours after the federal minister for water and power unfolded the nationwide energy conservation plan requiring shopping areas and commercial centres to switch off their lights by 8pm from Monday. The plan has since been rejected by traders.
The intermittent and prolonged power failures, along with load-shedding, caused serious disruption in water supply as pumping stations could not operate.
The massive load-shedding has been prompted by a shortfall of over 300MW because not only the KESC’s own power generation has dipped but several grid stations have been knocked off. Bin Qasim could produce about 625MW – about half of its installed capacity — while 11 of its grid stations were affected by the ultimate tripping of its overloaded extra high tension lines.
The collapse of the KESC network early Saturday morning was caused by some problems in the Landhi-Pipri circuit.
The KESC tried to revive the collapsed system but the problem of low voltage foiled the bid. The system was also affected badly by the tripping of lines at 9:58am, causing a shortfall of over 300MW.
As a consequence, the distribution system at Bin Qasim, Airport, Gadap, Pipri, Export Processing Zone, Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Malir, Landhi, Korangi (East and West), and Gulistan-i-Jauhar was affected and power supply to much of the city remained suspended most of the day.
According to sources, the Bin Qasim power station was generating about 625MW while the demand has risen to 2,250MW as against 2,230MW on Friday. The Unit-4 is not available because of delayed repairs while the Unit-5, which was renovated last year, has also been affected. The Unit-1 is out of order whereas the supply of 70MW from Kanupp is not available.
Most of the grid stations in the city remained affected by the system collapse and the utility could not restore power supply to most parts of the city. As such, a major portion of the city remained without power for more than five hours at a stretch, although the KESC officials had said load-shedding would not exceed two hours in each of the two strings in 24 hours.
Karachians were enraged over the situation and students appearing in SSC examinations were appalled by the power outage as it ruined their preparation.
Hospitals and dispensaries were also affected as not many of them have the alternative source of power supply. Industrialists, businessmen and traders slammed the utility for causing them huge losses.
Many people believed that the Saturday breakdown was engineered to black out the coverage of the rally of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry in Punjab.
