KARACHI, July 25: People in a major portion of the city spent a sleepless night as the Karachi Electricity Supply Corporation was faced with a sudden shortfall of 700 megawatts due to the tripping of Hubco-Baldia link and Jamshoro-KDA link on Monday-Tuesday night.

Briefing newsmen at the KESC head office here on Tuesday, the utility’s principal information officer Sultan Hasan said that the crisis situation developed at around 2am when the two links carrying supply from Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) tripped while power supply from an independent power producer, Tapal, was also suspended.

The Unit-6 at the Bin Qasim Power Plant was shut down for maintenance and the KESC was faced with an aggregate 700 megawatts power from 2am to 8am.

He said that the KESC had to bear Rs3 billion loss due to the sudden shortfall. However, he added, the Jamshoro link was restored in the morning and the Unit-6 was made functional by the afternoon, producing 110 megawatts. He said that the Hubco link could not be restored till late Tuesday night.

The KESC officer said that although loadshedding was carried out on Monday-Tuesday night across the city on a rotation basis, the situation came under control on Tuesday afternoon and the no loadshedding had been carried out on Tuesday night as the demand did not exceed the expected limit of 2,160 megawatts.

Mr Hasan said that the Surjani and North Nazimabad grid stations had developed faults at around 8am and were made functional at around noon. Similarly, the Gadap grid station was affected at around 4:45am and it took at least eight hours to locate and rectify the fault before the grid was made functional at about 1pm. He said that due to overloading and overheating of the system, loadshedding had to be continued in the residential areas of Liaquatabad, Civic Centre, Nazimabad, Valika, Orangi Town, North Karachi, Federal A & B Areas grid stations.

Meanwhile, residents of many areas complained of intermittent and prolonged power failures on Monday night and Tuesday.

An irate woman consumer from Block-7, Gulshan-i-Iqbal, said that power supply was suspended at 1am on Tuesday and was not restored even after the lapse of 20 hours. “The KESC people are not giving a valid reason nor are they telling that when they will restore the power supply,” she added.

An angry consumer from Lalazaar said that intermittent power failures spanning two to four hours continued in his locality for the past two-three days.

Another consumer from Darakhshan said that power went off three to four times spanning one to two hour each during Monday night, forcing residents to spend a sleepless night. The situation remained the same during the day with electricity playing hide-and-seek, he said.

A resident of Block-12, Gulistan-i-Jauhar, said that power supply situation these days in his locality was worst and one could not organise his day to day activity due to the frequent and prolonged power failures.

Similar complaints were received from Liaquatabad, Jamshed Road, Federal B Area, North Nazimabad, North Karachi, Nazimabad, Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Soldier Bazaar, Old town, parts of Lyari, Defence Housing Authority, Clifton and other areas where people complained of intermittent and prolonged power failures.