LAHORE/KARACHI: The country faced the worst-ever power breakdown minutes after midnight on Saturday, plunging countless cities, towns and villages in Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan into darkness.

A substantial area in Sindh was affected, too. The breakdown did not spare even Islamabad.

This was the fourth major breakdown of the system within the past one month.

According to the authorities, the first fault occurred at Uch-1, tripping the 220-kv Sibbi-Quetta transmission line. Later the Uch-2 went off the grid, too.

“This had a knock-on effect, bringing almost the entire system down with it,” a spokesman for the Natio­nal Transmission and Despatch Company told Dawn.

An inquiry team had been constituted to identify the fault, they added.

TV channels quoted a spokesman for the water and power ministry as saying: “Three grid stations of the National Transmission and Dispatch Company tripped, causing power failure in Punjab and Sindh.”

“Currently 80pc of the country is without power. We have initiated the restoration work and hope to complete the job in five to eight hours. The system collapsed due to overloading of transformers.”

Karachi and several other cities in Sindh saw the same crisis last month when a technical fault in one of the high voltage transmission lines supplying electricity to the provincial capital from the national grid severed. Then the officials had said that the 500kv transmission line had tripped due to humidity and fog.

Saleem Shahid adds from Quetta: Twenty-two districts of Balochistan, including Quetta, plunged into darkness on Saturday night. “A major fault has developed in the transmission line,” Qesco officials said.

Published in Dawn January 25th , 2015

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