LAHORE: Following three major power breakdowns this month and substantial additions of generation in the system, the National Transmission and Despatch Company (NTDC) decided on Tuesday to carry out a highly technical study to propose further islanding options both in the Northern and Southern transmission systems.

The core objective behind this exercise is to boost the system protection and avoid incidents of tripping, triggering supply failures in north of the country. To this end, a consultant of international repute will be hired.

The decision was made in a meeting of the NTDC’s board of directors presided over by Babar Iqbal at Water and Power Development Authority House on a single-point agenda to ascertain the facts regarding partial power failure as well as the way forward.

The board members expressed grave concerns over extrinsic factors which could cause or aggravate such failures. They directed the management to take up the issue of supply of adequately stabilising MVARs by the generating stations and also the availability of black start facility in their system.

They expressed firm commitment to revamp and revitalise the transmission system of the country and instructed the management to fully investigate, analyse and determine the causes of the failure and for adopting mitigating measures to avoid such system collapse in the future.

Another specific concern shown by the board was the lack of well-established communication channels among all the distribution and generation companies, Central Power Purchasing Agency and independent power producers regarding data sharing and restoration of the system. The management was directed to immediately have a meeting of all the stakeholders to prepare the SOP for handling emergency situations in the future.

During the meeting, NTDC management presented a comprehensive and detailed analysis of the incident, specifically the key system limitations of contingency. The board was apprised that the two 500 kilovolt transmission lines tripped due to fault at Guddu Power House switchyard – triggering the third line’s breakdown as it could not sustain the load of the other two.

As a result, the system was split in two regions – North and South. The under-frequency relays installed in the northern system isolated around 2,800 megawatts power load to stabilise the system. In the meantime, loss of additional generation in the North lead to collapse of the system and there was no further capacity available in the system to isolate an equivalent load.

The board directed the management to keep all the NTDC teams on high alert and take all precautionary measures to deal with any untoward situation to ensure steady supply to the consumers round the year.

Talking to Dawn, a senior NTDC official said the study would have recommendations related to dividing north and southern systems in maximum seven independent clusters so as to avoid cascading effect of such breakdowns. “This study is a need of the hour since our system has expanded to about 30,000MW installed capacity. And it continues to expand keeping in view the increasing demand and supply,” an official privy to the development said.

NANDIPUR: 425MW gas-fired Nandipur Power Plant will resume power generation during next week. The plant is closed these days because of scheduled outages for maintenance purposes, according to an official source. “The plant went on scheduled maintenance on May 11 for 16 days. However, it will resume operations by the end of this month,” he added.

Published in Dawn, May 23rd, 2018