January 02, 2009	Friday	Muharram 04, 1430

KARACHI, Jan 1: It was a less than festive start to the new year for citizens of Karachi, as massive outages hit KESC consumers across the city, after the utility’s system was tripped by multiple faults.

Tripping in the system knocked out the Karachi Nuclear Power Plant (Kanupp), resulting in a further shortage of 80MW of supply.

Kanupp was back online on Sunday at midnight after routine maintenance/inspections being carried out since Dec 25. The tripping of Kanupp on Thursday further compounded the KESC’s supply problems, with consumers suffering through two-hour outages divided by just an hour of electricity being supplied. Load-shedding continued across the city, with homes and businesses alike hit by the shortage, caused by the KESC management’s failure to improve generation.

According to a Kanupp spokesman, the nuclear power plant ceased operation and power production at about 12:15pm on Thursday, due to the loss of both transmission lines connecting it to the KESC system. He said operations will recommence within 36-48 hours of the transmission lines being revived.

Meanwhile, the Bin Qasim Thermal Power Plant continued to be under-utilised, as the KESC management refused to purchase furnace oil to increase generation. Due to the current gas supply issues, and the increase in its price, the KESC has not been able to run all six units at the Bin Qasim on natural gas.

The installed generation capacity of all six units is 1160MW, but they have not generated more than 400MW over the last few days, with three generation units remaining shut down.

By Thursday evening, 70 per cent of the city had faced massive load-shedding, with up to four spells without electricity. The total accumulated amount of load-shedding went as high as 12 hours in the last 24.