KARACHI: The city suffered another power breakdown on Thursday and this time again K-Electric blamed “effect of adverse weather conditions” for the abrupt disconnection of power supply to large parts of the city early in the morning.

The affected areas included Malir, Landhi, Korangi, blocks of Gulshan-i-Iqbal and Gulistan-i-Jauhar, North Karachi, Federal B Area, Defence and Clifton.

The power supply was suspended to the areas a little after 6am and took more than three hours to restore.

“Power supply to Karachi restored to routine levels after a disruption was triggered due to a rollover effect of adverse weather conditions resulting in abrupt disconnection of power supply to Karachi from the National Grid in the early hours of the morning. K-Electric is currently receiving 650MW on average from the National Grid,” said a K-Electric statement.

“Despite the abrupt loss of power from the national grid and the subsequent tripping of our system, due to this surge, five of KE’s generating units landed safely in island mode. This was key in restoration of power in city to routine levels in shortest possible time.”

Meanwhile, Federal Minister for Power Omar Ayub Khan directed the authorities to investigate the matter in detail to see if any preventive maintenance was carried out by both the National Transmission and Despatch Company (NTDC) and KE to avoid such incidents.

“The prevailing issue of tripping in main transmission lines in the areas of K-Electric and other coastal regions is due to adverse weather conditions,” said a statement issued by the federal power ministry. “High moisture in the coastal areas causes technical faults in the main transmission lines which ultimately bring power outage in the areas of Karachi, Thatta and Badin.”

Published in Dawn, October 5th, 2018