KARACHI, May 17: As KESC chief Lt-Gen (retd) Syed Muhammad Amjad warned Karachiites to be ready to suffer the curse of load-shedding for another five years, unit 2 of the Bin Qasim power project tripped on Thursday, prompting a load-shedding to the tune of about 350MW, stretching for several hours.

The tripping compounded the power problem as repairs of unit 4, which produce 190MW, has been delayed and it is not expected to come on line before May 25.

The system had caved in because of the failure of the utility’s successive management to invest in improvement of generation and distribution system. At the time of KESC’s privatization it was stated that the utility should become profitable entity in two years after maintenance and revamping of the system. But that was not done and the system became overloaded day by day, causing serious losses in terms of revenue and man hours, in addition to inconveniences to the people.

The KESC does not have any quick-fix way to address the power problem but the timeline the new CEO has given to reduce load-shedding was seemingly difficult to achieve despite long-term projects initiated by the utility.

Meanwhile widespread load-shedding, which was resumed on Tuesday by the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation after three days of bloodletting, is especially worrisome for the students appearing in various examinations and the industrialists and traders who had suffered considerable losses due to forced closures.

Load-shedding to the tune of 350MW is being resorted to in different groups as the demand surged to 2300MW from 1,700MW during the three four nightmarish days. Many areas remained without electricity for several hours.

A resident of sector 15A5, Al Erum Foundation apartments, Buffer Zone, said he suffered four to five hour power outages twice a day and no reason for that was being offered by the KESC complaint centre.

A harassed mother from Block 4, Gulshan-i-Iqbal, said the area was experiencing long outages every day and there was no electricity today since 12 noon. Although the commercial area was lit up, there was no electricity for the residential consumers, she said. Her biggest grievance was that how could the children prepare for their exams?

Residents of Block 14, Gulshan-i-Iqbal, who had experienced a power breakdown after midnight on Tuesday, had a similar complaint on Thursday. They were without electricity since 1pm for several hours.

The power crisis has also aggravated because the KESC's new privatized management, whose operations are in the hands of Siemens, has failed in enhancing the utility's generation capacity and has quietly lowered the 11 KV systems to 10 KV, thus providing about 170 volts instead of 220. It has thus strained the overloaded distribution system, which trips every now and then, causing widespread damage to electrical appliances.

But the biggest problem with the KESC is its presumptive and misleading demand and load calculations. According to the KESC, the utility's own available new combined cycle (gross) generation capacity for the month of May was 1,534MW. After deducting 200MW for maintenance and spinning reserve, the net KESC capacity was estimated at 1,334MW. But actually this was not more than 900MW due to the failure of the KESC to repair and reactivate its dwindling power generation units of Bin Qasim, KTPS, KTGT and Site GT. Projections for June and July were 1,584MW and 1,684MW respectively.

Import from Wapda, Kanupp, Gul Ahmad and Tapal plants was estimated at 2,339MW in May, 2,389MW in June and 2,504MW in July this year. But these presumptive estimations have been proved wrong by increasing power outages and dwindling generation capacity.