KARACHI, June 4: Karachiites will have to endure a long summer with curtailed electric supply as the KESC on Tuesday announced the day-time loadshedding plan for at least until June 24.

The KESC has resorted to loadshedding in two groups. Duration of the loadshedding in each group would be one hour.

The announcement came when the people had not fully recovered from the overnight massive power breakdown, owing to under- frequency which the KESC spokesman claimed had occurred in the national grid.

The announcement has increased the anxiety of the people, especially those connected with industry and business. Soccer enthusiast are also disappointed because they may miss some thrilling moments of the World Cup.

The loadshedding has been announced at a time when the country needs maximum power in view of the prevailing situation.

While the utility’s own generating capacity is rapidly declining and suffering owing to transmission losses and power theft, the KESC announced it was forced to announce group-wise hour-long loadshedding during daytime from 9am to 4pm, as it was facing a shortage of about 100-120 MW electricity during the day peak hours.

Apparently WAPDA, in consultation with the KESC, had planned maintenance shut down of the KESC-WAPDA Jamshoro circuit during daytime, because the maintenance of both the circuits was necessary to avoid any major fault in the only WAPDA-KESC link.

The maintenance work on circuit No.1 will continue up to June 14, thereafter work on circuit No 2 will continue until June 24.

This will restrict KESC to import up to 300 MW from single circuit during daytime. Later, both the circuits will supply power as per demand and loadshedding will be avoided during the evening and night, according to a KESC spokesman.

It was his contention that the maintenance of the circuit might not have created power shortage during the daytime, but non-availability of natural gas to operate the KESC gas turbines, both at SITE and Korangi, had further deepened the power shortage by about 140 MW.

The power generation position of the KESC is: BQPS 825MW, KTPS 185MW, PASMIC 10-16MW, TAPAL 110MW, GUL AHMED 110MW, KANUPP 40 MW. The city day peak demand was 1600 to 1700 MW, therefore supplies of maximum 300MW from WAPDA leaves a gap of 100-120MW during daytime, which can only be overcome by loadshedding.

Explaining the power breakdowns the spokesman said that disturbance in the frequency (speed at which electricity travel- to be maintained at 50 cycles per second at the national grid) might cause power cuts and feeder tripping. “Such a situation occurs whenever the frequency decreases to 49.42 cycles.

Nearly 150 to 200 feeders trip, which are reactivated manually, one after the other and the power supply at the consumer-end remains suspended from 15 to 30 minutes.”

“The KESC will not carry out loadshedding during the night time. Efforts are also being made to avoid daytime loadshedding”, the KESC spokesman concluded.

Meanwhile, a large number of people from across the city complained that their power supply was not yet restored after yesterdays widespread breakdown.