CHITRAL: Power supply to Chitral from the Golen Gol hydropower station resumed on Friday afternoon following a break of three days when the software governing its operation system developed a fault.

The hydropower station’s project manager Engr Javed Afridi told Dawn that there were two alternatives to restart the operations, either to provide power supply from external source or to install the software afresh.

He said both the alternatives were next to impossible within a week’s time as the Lowari Top was not accessible by the technical staff due to heavy snow to reconnect the transmission line to the national grid for providing electricity to the power station.

“The second option was equally difficult to be achieved as the Chinese company providing electro-mechanical equipment to the power station had to send engineers from China to Chitral for installation of modified software in the power station,” he said.

The engineer of the Chinese company who had developed the software for the power station was currently in Vietnam, but the Chinese company made an attempt of hiring his on-line services, he added.

For this purpose, he said another Chinese software engineer present in Pakistan was sent to Golen who established visual contact with the Vietnam-based engineer and started getting instructions and developed circuits which worked well and the electro-mechanical equipment started working,” he said.

“The power station started working as usual and the transmission lines were energised in no time and more than 21,000 consumers heaved a sigh of relief after getting electricity,” he said, adding that Chitral was supplied electricity from the local grid station at Juti Lusht and the disconnection of transmission lines in Lowari Top would no more affect it.

Published in Dawn, January 26th, 2019