ISLAMABAD: The National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) has taken serious notice of a major power breakdown that hit Karachi on Monday and directed K-Electric to immediately submit a detailed report on the issue.

In a statement, Nepra said it had taken notice of media reports that Karachi had witnessed another major breakdown in the early hours of Monday morning due to closure of the Bin Qasim Power Plant which resulted in the tripping of a high-voltage transmission line and KE’s isolation from the national grid.

The power breakdown caused great inconvenience to the people of Karachi who suffered hours-long power outage. The breakdown affected 80 per cent areas of the city.

Nepra highlighted that it was the fifth major power breakdown within two months.

“The authority has serious concerns on the prevailing situation in respect of poor performance of KE’s network,” the regulator said and directed the power utility to submit a detailed report on the latest incident along with preventive and corrective steps being taken to stop such breakdowns in future.

KE spokesperson Khayyam Siddiqui, on the other hand, blamed the National Transmission and Dispatch Company (NTDC) for the power failure and said this had been brought to the notice of the regulator through a letter on the day of the power breakdown.

He said the KE had already intimated Nepra about abrupt disconnection of power supply to Karachi from the national grid. The letter says the tripping in the NTDC system due to adverse weather conditions caused a roll-over effect, resulting in outage in various parts of the city.

It further says that KE’s Bin Qasim Power Station-II and Korangi Combined Cycle Power Plant landed safely in island mode ensuring earliest possible restoration of power supply to the city.

Moreover, power supply to all strategic installations in the affected areas was restored on a priority basis. The KE also supplied power for a few hours to initialise the Port Qasim Coal Power Plant connected to the national grid.

The letter further says the power utility has taken up with the NTDC the matter of frequent tripping incidents of NTDC circuits during high humidity under the interim connectivity of the Port Qasim Coal Power Plant generation, resulting in sudden disconnections from the NTDC which cause serious problems for the KE.

The NTDC has been requested to carry out a complete system relay coordination study along with a meeting of all stakeholders to make a joint strategy to avert similar incidents in future.

Published in Dawn, November 14th, 2018