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KARACHI, July 26: Power supply from the Karachi nuclear power plant (Kanupp) could not be restored until Thursday evening, 24 hours after a fault caused by the tripping of two circuits at the Baldia grid on Wednesday resulted in a major breakdown.
The tripping blocked the relay of 80 megawatts from Kanupp through the KESC’s both high-tension lines carrying power to certain parts of the city. The circuits have recently been reinforced by the Siemens-led Operation & Management contractors.
Soon after the breakdown, Kanupp officials offered restoration of power supply on Thursday if the KESC rectified the fault in its transmission network on Wednesday night. However, the KESC failed to locate the fault until Thursday evening.
One of the tripped circuits was revived at around 4pm on Thursday and Kanupp officials ordered ‘warm-up’ measures but it tripped again just five minutes later. The KESC could not figure out how long it would take to restore the power supply.
KESC’s Director Coordination, Adnan Bashir Khan, who until recently headed the Siemens-led operations, maintained that the fault had been rectified within half an hour after the disruption in the power supply from Kanupp.
He, however, pointed out that the problem in restoring power supply was the tripping of Baldia grid circuits and the KESC would not be able to revive the circuits before 10pm on Friday. He appeared unaware of the revival and breakdown of one circuit.
When the KESC spokesman was contacted at around 4pm on Thursday, he said one of the circuits was being revived at the moment and the other one would also be revived before midnight.
Kanupp spokesman Tariq Rashid, when approached three hours later, said that one circuit was revived but it tripped within five minutes after activation, adding that Kanupp’s warm-up exercise had to be called off accordingly.
The KESC continued with its load-shedding programme across the city with an even enhanced frequency and duration in spite of the revival of a broken down unit of the Korangi Thermal Power Plant on Thursday.
The massive load-shedding was prompted by the shortfall in power generation to the tune of over 200 megawatts a few days back. Although the KESC maintains that load-shedding was not being carried out for more than two hours at a stretch, power consumers from various parts of the city said they were experiencing power outages continuing for up to four hours several times both in the day and night hours. Many of them also complained that their requests for the removal of local faults were also not attended to.
As if load-shedding wasn’t enough
Complaints of inflated power bills are piling up at the KESC offices and many people claimed that they had been receiving bills showing more than double of their average consumption. They wondered how they could consume more electricity while experiencing massive load-shedding over the past month or so.
A resident of North Nazimabad, Block C, bearing consumer no AL 140511, said that he couldn’t understand why the bill for July touched the Rs14,000 mark.
“The period covered by the bill – June 10 to July 10 – was marked by countless hours of load-shedding. My electricity bill for the month of May showed Rs6,100.
The June bill jumped to Rs12, 900 and now the July bill shows the amount as Rs14, 200,” he argued, and asked: “Are these rates justified, or is there something funny with the KESC’s billing mechanism?”
Central coordinator of the All Pakistan Organisation of Small Traders and Cottage Industries Mahboob Azam has warned that traders would stage street protests if the KESC did not stop load-shedding for long hours.
In a statement, he said that load-shedding for three to four hours daily had seriously undermined trade and manufacturing activities which would deal a severe blow to Pakistan’s exports.
He was of the view that the foreign owners of the KESC were conspiring against Pakistan and wanted to undermine its economy.
President of the Small Traders of Karachi Mahmood Hamid, addressing a protest rally, said that the load-shedding had forced many traders to wind up their business.
Recalling that at the time of the KESC’s privatisation, the new management had promised to invest Rs10 billion for its improvement, he pointed out that not a single penny had in effect been invested as yet.
