June 19, 2008	Thursday	Jamadi-us-Sani 14, 1429

KARACHI, June 18: Residents in many localities spent a sleepless night on Tuesday as the prevailing power crisis aggravated in the metropolis due to an abrupt shutdown of another power generating unit of Bin Qasim Thermal Power Station.

The Karachi Electric Supply Company carried out six to eight hours of load-shedding in almost every locality of the city on a rotational basis. The gravity of the crisis could be gauged from the fact that the power utility resorted to load-shedding even in industrial areas to bridge the demand and supply gap.

Areas including Federal B Area, Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Gulistan-i-Jauhar, Bahadurabad, PECHS, Liaquatabad, Buffer Zone, North Nazimabad, Nazimabad, North Karachi, Model Colony, Orangi Town, Jamshed Road, Gulshan-i-Maymar and Sohrab Goth experienced prolonged power failures.

There were reports that enraged people resorted to violence in some localities of the city as they burnt tyres on roads and besieged the local complaint centres.

Unit 4 of the BQTPS ceased to function on Tuesday night causing a shortfall of about 170MW. Besides, units 3 and unit 6 were also producing power much below their original capacity. The KESC was facing a shortage of over 500MW during the small hours of Wednesday due to which many areas plunged into darkness.

However, the resumption of power supply from the Karachi Nuclear Power Plant (Kannup) to the KESC, coupled with restoration of supply from Unit 4, helped the utility in minimising the duration of load-shedding during the day.

Sources in the power utility told Dawn that till 9pm, the KESC was facing a shortfall of about 175MW due to which it was carrying out group-wise load-shedding for one hour.

Besides power load-shedding, over a dozen cable faults hit the localities of Korangi, Malir and Garden on Wednesday. The process to trace and repair the faults took extra time due to which these localities remained without electricity for several hours.

Separately, an impressive surge in the share price of KESC was witnessed on Wednesday in the Karachi Stock Exchange on speculation of a possible change of guards in the utility’s management.

Meanwhile, Kannup resumed 70MW supply to the KESC on Wednesday. Kannup was shut down on May 19 due to the loss of a KESC grid.

A spokesman for Kannup said that after the shutdown, extensive maintenance activities, including inspection of fuel channels, replacement of primary heat transport system pump motors etc were carried out.

These were essential safety requirements by the regulator before plant start-up. A plant has now been connected with the KESC grid and at present it is operating at 70MW and the output will be gradually increased to the previous level of 90MW, he added.

The relevant quarters suspect that the power utility deliberately shut down its various thermal generation units under the pretext of various technical faults in order to conserve its fuel expenses incurred on running these units.