ISLAMABAD: As people in smaller towns and rural areas across the country and in Azad Kashmir continued to face electricity blackouts on Sunday, the government attributed the national crisis to sabotage and claimed to have restored 7,500MW supply against a nationwide demand of 11,500MW.

Officials said two double circuit transmission lines between Sibbi and Guddu had been under repair for about 10 days when two towers of the third line between Uch and Sibbi, known in official jargon as single circuit contingency line, came under attack, leading to tripping of two Uch power stations.

This led to a usual domino effect on the entire system, cutting off Guddu and then the rest of the national grid as engineers struggled to isolate Balochistan.

Water and Power Secretary Younas Dagha said the power system in the rest of the country could not be protected from going offline because the major Sibbi-Guddu line was already under repair.

Addressing a press conference, he said technicians took about two hours to restore the transmission and Islamabad was re-energised in about three hours and Peshawar in the early morning. The entire transmission system was revived by 8.30am as power plants started coming into production one-by-one, he claimed. He said the entire generation and transmission system would be normal some time on Monday.

K-Electric spokesperson Usama Qureshi said the entire Karachi had faced blackout a few minutes before Saturday midnight and power supply was completely restored by 6.30am on Sunday.

Smaller towns, rural areas still under darkness; secretary claims 7,500MW supply restored

He said the system could have been revived two hours earlier had the National Transmission and Dispatch Company (NTDC) been able to provide 10MW for the start-up of its Bin Qasim plant. It could have helped Hubco to restart. He said that when machines are off for a long time they required time to revive.

As if that was not enough, the power bureaucracy faced a fresh challenge as the provinces led by Punjab decided to extend canal closure for another 7-10 days.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif directed Water and Power Minister Khawaja Asif to submit a report on the massive countrywide shutdown. The prime minister was informed that the system was gradually being brought back to normal as three plants had been connected to the national grid and within a few hours the system would be largely restored.

The minister said the breakdown was caused by three sabotage incidents and not because of any fault in the transmission system. He informed the prime minister that saboteurs had blown up transmission lines in Uch on Saturday night, which resulted in tripping of the Guddu power plant, leading the whole system to collapse.

The prime minister directed the power ministry and provincial authorities to complete restoration work on a war footing.

A senior power ministry official told Dawn that the NTDC had reduced water withdrawal from Tarbela dam to 11,000 cusecs from 15,000 cusecs when the power breakdown took place and tripped the entire system. The releases from Mangla dam were, however, increased from 15,000 to 25,000 cusecs which were later reduced to 20,000 cusecs at NTDC’s request.

On Sunday, the NTDC asked the Indus River System Authority (Irsa) to compensate for the reduced discharges and increase releases as much as possible to generate more electricity. Irsa agreed to do so but turned down the request for higher flows because to resistance from the provinces.

According to officials, the Punjab government said it required a few days to complete repair work at Jinnah barrage and, therefore, canals originating from the barrage should be kept closed until Feb 9, instead of previous schedule of Jan 31.

The opening of Chashma Right Bank scheduled for Jan 31 has also been delayed to Feb 15. As a consequence, flows in Indus downstream Tarbela will remain much lower until the middle of February. Canals originating from Trimmu barrage will also be reopened on Jan 31, instead of Jan 25.

Blaming terrorism for the nationwide blackout, the water and power secretary said it was the third sabotage incident in the same area in about 12 days. The target was to deprive Balochistan of electricity, he added.

He said the first incident had taken place on Jan 13 when three towers of the Guddu-Sibbi transmission line had been blown up, resulting in tripping of Uch power plants of 800-900MW which supplied power to entire Balochistan and major parts of the country.

Mr Dagha claimed that the double circuit transmission line had been restored immediately and the national grid escaped any major accident, but the Uch plant could not supply more than 600MW against usual 800MW. The system is being repaired.

The second incident took place on Jan 23 when a 15-foot gas supply line of the Oil and Gas Development Company Limited (OGDCL) was blown up.

The secretary said OGDCL engineers had restored the supply line and major parts of the country remained unaffected. He said the system was operating normally on Saturday, supplying about 9,000-9,500MW and was expected to go up to 10,500MW. As a consequence, he said, the government had announced its plan to reduce the duration of loadshedding to four hours for industry, six hours in urban centres and eight hours in rural areas.

But suddenly the transmission towers number 75 and 76 were blown up just before midnight. The reasons could not be ascertained immediately because engineers focused on restoring the system, Mr Dagha said, adding that the local police later confirmed that the two towers had been blown up.

He said the areas under Sukkur and Hyderabad electricity supply companies mostly remained unaffected. He said the system was now supplying 7,500MW against the demand of 11,500MW and the plan for reduced loadshedding announced last week would be implemented from Monday.

Mr Dagha said it was difficult to provide security to the entire transmission line, although sensitive installations like power houses had sufficient security arrangements.

He said the provincial governments, local administrations and other security institutions had been asked to beef up security because the “target of terrorism seemed to be Balochistan”.

Answering a question, he conceded that transmission lines lacked planning for investment in the past, even though focus remained on setting up power plants. It emerged last summer that the transmission system was not capable of sustaining more than 15,500MW load.

The secretary claimed that sufficient oil stocks were available to run the system for another week and more supplies had been lined up.

Published in Dawn January 26th , 2015

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