KARACHI: A large number of city localities plunged into darkness on Tuesday night as a major fault occurred in the transmission and distribution system of power distributor K-Electric (KE).

According to KE officials, a conductor on the main 220KV transmission line failed, causing the extra high tension line to trip. This caused a ripple effect and units at Bin Qasim power plant tripped in turn, plunging most parts of the city in darkness.

Calling from different parts of Karachi, people said they faced the first power cut at around 9.00pm.

The power breakdown also affected commercial activities of the city with business centres and markets turned dark, and people facing difficulties making their way out of densely populated shopping malls.

K-Electric did not give any timeframe when their engineers would fully rectify the fault. “Our engineers are working and we expect the supply will soon restore. In fact some parts of the city have already got the circuit back,” the K-Electric spokesman told Dawn.

The outages affected a large number of areas in the city, including Steel Town, Gulshan-i-Hadeed, Malir, Lyari, Old City, Saddar, Clifton, Defence, Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Gulistan-i-Jauhar, Federal B Area, Lines Area and Garden.

Karachi’s electricity distribution system is a complex, and delicate, web and a major fault at one section often leads to chain reactions and breakdowns of power generation and transmission.

Other parts of Sindh, Balochistan face blackout as restoration work continues

As KE teams continued restoration work after a major power breakdown plunged most of Karachi into darkness, all four units of the Jamshoro Thermal Power House stopped functioning early Wednesday, leading to a blackout in several other areas of Sindh, including Sukkur and Hyderabad, and Balochistan.

While restoration work was underway from the EHT conductor breakage, the sudden tripping of 500KV transmission line of the National Transmission and Dispatch Company (NTDC) caused the Hubco/Jamshoro power plants to trip and took out KE generation units as well, KE claimed on Twitter.

KE teams are making alternate arrangements to restore power supply in Karachi, said the statement.

A KE spokesman said restoration of the tripped units will take at least three hours, DawnNews reported.