Restoration of the electricity supply has begun in different areas of the country after a suspension of more than 11 to 12 hours on Monday.
According to the 24News HD TV channel, around 1300 feeders linked to the National Grid System across the country were tripped on Monday morning at 7:34 am.
The Sindh Electric Power Company (SEPCO) Spokesperson Asad Mughal confirmed that out of 445 tripped feeders of the company, 95 feeders out have been restored by an alternative method in Sukkur after 11 hours long suspension.
The SEPCO spokesperson also said that the restoration work is also going on at other affected feeders.
The channel report said the electricity supply from the national grid system was restored in Kashmore city and its surrounding areas after 11 hours as at 7:30 in the morning, there was a power breakdown across the country including Kashmore.
It is also reported that power has been restored in the Larkana district of Sindh after twelve hours.
The channel report also said that the electricity supply was fully restored after 11 hours in some areas of Balochistan including the entire Dera Bugti district and Sui areas.
As per the channel report, the power has also been restored in the district Mach of Balochistan after twelve hours of suspension.
Earlier today, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif took notice of the countrywide power breakdown and ordered a high-level inquiry to ascertain the reasons for the massive outage disrupting routine life and business.
The prime minister constituted a high-level committee to investigate the power breakdown and sought a report from Energy Minister Khurram Dastgir on the causes leading to the major electricity crisis in the country. He also asked him to pinpoint the officials who had shown negligence.
Ordering immediate restoration of power supply, Shehbaz Sharif said such incidents would not be tolerated.
Power Minister Khurrum Dastagir told newsmen that the outage was caused by a large voltage surge in the south of the national grid, which affected the entire network.
Supplies were being partially restored from north to the south, the minister said nearly six hours after factories, hospitals and schools reported outages.
The minister said the grid should be fully functioning by 10pm. “We are trying our utmost to achieve restoration before that,” he added.
Earlier, a massive electricity breakdown caused by a fault in the national grid hit the country Monday morning disrupting life in all major cities including Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar and Quetta.
Sources said transmission lines of Tarbela and Mangla dams were tripped and all power plants in Guddu, Jamshoro, Muzaffargarh, Haveli Bahadur Shah and Balloki shut down. The NPC fuse was also switched off to save the system.
The power supply went off suddenly at 7:32 am with IESCO, LESCO, MEPCO, SEPCO, QESCO and K-Electric being the most affected.
A number of cities in Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and Punjab were without power supply.
As many as 22 districts of Balochistan were without electricity and supply was suspended to 117 grid stations of IESCO.
According to QESCO officials, both electricity power transmission lines coming from Guddu to Quetta have been tripped impacting 22 districts including Quetta, Khuzdar, Sibbi and Dera Murad Jamali.
Karachi, the economic hub of the country, also knocked out of the grid because of the NTDC system collapse
Sources said National Transmission & Despatch Company (NTDC) and power distribution companies have launched efforts to restore the power supply which may take 27 hours.
Local outages are common across Pakistan, and the national power system is a complex and delicate web where problems can quickly cascade.
In a couple of tweets, the Ministry of Power said the system frequency of the national grid went down at 7:34 this morning, causing a widespread breakdown in the power system. System maintenance work is progressing rapidly.”
In another post, the ministry said the restoration of power supply from Warsak to grid stations has been started and in the last hour limited number of grids of Islamabad Supply Company and Peshawar Supply Company have been restored.
The NTDC’s attempt to restore the power supply across the country hit a snag due to the low power generation at the moment. All NTDC’s attempts so far have not yielded any results as the system was tripping again and again due to an imbalance between generation and demand.
As for now 6,000 megawatts of electricity are being generated and the balance in the system will be achieved after the generation hits the 8,000MW mark.
Internet, and banking services were disrupted badly
The power breakdown has brutally disrupted daily life activities in several cities.
In Rawalpindi, mobile phone service and 4G internet systems have started to err.
The citizens were appalled as their online businesses and banking transactions are also badly affected.
The country has faced such power breakdowns several times in the past and the recent one showed that the National Transmission and Despatch Company (NTDC) had failed to put in place permanent remedial measures to overcome such incidents.
The National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) has recently imposed a fine of Rs20 million on the NTDC because of breakdowns and collapsing of its towers.
