KARACHI: Consumers in many parts of the city on Tuesday complained of prolonged power outages and unattended faults as the privatised Karachi Electric Supply Company failed to meet the demand for electricity in the city and was said to be deliberately curtailing its own generation to save on fuel cost.

On Tuesday the utility which is suffering 40 per cent line losses was unable to meet the demand for 1,995 MW and was short of 300 MW in meeting the city’s demand.

But the management had persisted for almost a week with keeping two of its generating units of Bin Qasim power plant dormant to save fuel which was further aggravating the power crisis in the city.

According to sources, the main power generating plant of the KESC, Bin Qasim Power station, was providing 610 MW only.

Units I and IV of BQPS were not operating to save fuel while units II and III were generating 160 and 70 MW respectively. Units V & VI churned out 190 MW each.

While the two IPPs were not operating on full capacity, the KESC was also relying heavily on the Water and Power Development Authority which was supplying over 600 MW despite the pressure of demand in other parts of the country.

As consumers endured unattended breakdowns in many localities, there were reports of power problems in Malir, Gadap and adjoining areas, parts of Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Federal B. Area, Gulistan-i-Jauhar, Surjani, Keamari area, Sultanabad, Korangi, Garden area amongst others. Residents of C-1 area Orangi complained that broken wires posing a threat to residents had not yet been removed.

While power outage frequency has reached a minimum of four hours everyday, consumers were enraged over hefty bills received by them along with a huge amount of backlog spread over the last many years including those bills which were disputed and matters which are in litigation.

The frequency of the outages was indicative of the fact that the utility’s distribution system has not been upgraded as promised by the management and the progress in the designated towns was very slow and negligible.

Consumers suffered due to poor load-management that caused faults in jumpers and other fixtures on the EHT system which have become unmanageable. The rate of tripping of the EHT transmission lines and power transformers is more frequent either due to faulty protective gear or improper relay settings.

According to experts, the quantum of unwarranted/spurious tripping can, however, substantially be minimised by replacing the outdated/sluggish protective relays with the latest versions and reviewing all the existing settings and making necessary revisions where required to ensure selective and first operation of the relays during faults.

According to insiders, the privatised management is not following the proper standard operating procedure in the maintenance of grid station equipment and transmission lines.

At the root of the power problem in the city is the inability of the management to improve and enhance its existing generation capacity and adding new facilities.

The glaring example of it is the performance of Bin Qasim Power plant whose overall installed capacity is 1,260 MW. It has always suffered from retubes’ leakage, out-of-order high pressure feed water heaters, etc. Work on the much-talked-about combined cycle project at Bin Qasim has not taken off.

Meanwhile huge line losses (around 40 per cent), an increasing graph of widespread power theft, and the lack of proper earthing, voltage fluctuations and enhancement in the KESC’s generation capacity has compounded the problem. The utility has ignored the experts’ report on its system improvement.

According to insiders, KESC’s present transmission system, its operations and the prognosis for the future development reveals that KESC would have to immediately upgrade its operations and take care of the prerequisites for healthy operations and then invest heavily in training.

Despite KESC claims the HT & LT protection on distribution substations and PMTs is in a bad shape. The LT breakers in most of the cases were faulty. The earthing and grounding at PMTs/suband the 11 KV/LT system was found wanting in many cases.