LAHORE: Various Lahore Electric Supply Company’s (Lesco’s) service areas witnessed forced power shutdowns on Friday after the 500kV Sheikhupura grid station overloaded, tripping 132kV and 11kV system time to time.

The forced shutdowns were observed in Sheikhupura and its adjoining areas after, according to sources, a couple of power plants were closed on scheduled outages, overloading the National Transmission and Dispatch Company’s 500kV system in Sheikhupura that further led to overloading its 220kV transmission network and the distribution company’s (Lesco’s) 132kV system.

“It has become a permanent system constraint that normally happens whenever any of the total three 600MW power plants (Saba, Saphire and Halmore) go on scheduled outages for routine maintenance purposes. To resolve the issue, a transformer of 250MVA capacity is required to be installed at the 500kV Sheikhpura grid station,” an official, who requested anonymity, told Dawn on Friday.

He said the affected areas, where the forced shutdowns were observed, included a number of rural areas of Sheikhpura and Khanqa Dogra.

He said besides the 500kV system in Sheikhpura, the 220kV Kala Shah Kaku grid often remains overloaded due to various system constraints. Due to overloading of the 220kV Kala Shah Kaku grid, various 132kV grid stations become inoperative time to time.

DEMAND/SUPPLY: The power demand of the Lesco surged to 4,265MW on Friday due to hot and muggy weather. According to a Lesco official, the company drew 3,600MW under its allocated quota, while its total demand touched 4,265mw in peak hours.

“The maximum demand of the country surged to around 21,000MW, while the generation ranged between 17,000 to 17,500MW. So the total shortfall of the country ranged between 3,500 to 4,000MW,” said an official.

According to a spokesman, four 11kV feeders were added to the system in Kanganpur (Kasur), relieving several other feeders of the additional burden and ending consumers’ complaints related to tripping, low voltage, fluctuation etc.

Published in Dawn, July 22nd, 2017