ISLAMABAD - Entire Pakistan was plunged into darkness Monday morning, following a major power breakdown in the national grid, which has apparently resulted from the government’s energy-saving move. To save foreign exchange and for fuel conservation, some of the power plants are being temporarily shut down during night time, which backfired on Monday, when the systems were turned on in the morning, frequency variation and voltage fluctuation occurred in the southern parts of the country thus causing the nationwide power breakdown. This nation-wide outage affected the entire country including Karachi, Lahore, Quetta, Peshawar and Islamabad. In January 2021, there was also a countrywide power breakdown, which had plunged the entire country into darkness, again in October 2022, partial outages occurred which had pushed Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur, Quetta, Multan, and Faisalabad, and other areas into darkness.
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The relevant authorities had attributed the breakdown to a technical fault in the system. Taking serious notice of the power breakdown, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has ordered a high-level probe into the outage. “Why did this power crisis emerge in the country,” the premier asked the power minister to furnish a report and fix the responsibilities. While addressing on the national TV, Minister for Power Division Engineer Khurram Dastgir explained that the transmission system had tripped due to unusual fluctuation in the voltage of the national grid. The electricity was being restored in different parts of the country in a gradual manner and “hopefully it will be fixed com pletely tonight, he added. The Minister said the entire transmission system was safe despite such a massive power breakdown. A power plant located in the Uch area was functional, and power supply to some areas of Balochistan and Southern Punjab had already been restored. The Minister said partial power supply to Karachi had also been started through Thar Coal Power plants. He said the NTDC had been given the instructions to freely switch on any power plant, including the expensive power generation unit, to meet the demand.
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The Minister said a three-member investigation committee has been constituted to probe the matter. The prolonged outage that had pushed almost the entire country into darkness and the system was not fully restored even after 15 hours of breakdown. Meanwhile, during a briefing to Federal Minister for Power Division, Khurram Dastagir, an official of the National Power Construction Corporation (NPCC) said that the countrywide blackout has been caused by a sudden plunge in the frequency of the power transmission system, leading to tripping in the Guddu power station and then cascading to other stations. Due to the high demand and low supply in the grid, the restoration work faced difficulties. The breakdown occurred due to a fault in a major transmission line from the Guddu power station to Quetta, said an official of the Power Division. He said that due to a disconnection between the power plant and the transmission line, the frequency went down from a certain required level and resulted in cascading effects on other stations.
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Other reasons are being investigated. Meanwhile, another official said that on Sunday night owing to low demand for power, the power generation system was temporarily shut down, but in the morning when engineers tried to restore it, voltage fluctuation occurred forcing the engineers to shut down the power grid stations. The National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA), in a statement, said that it has taken “serious notice” of the power outage and directed the NTDC to submit a “detailed report”. The statement also said that the power regulator has previously imposed fines on similar outages in 2021 and 2022. It also shared that NEPRA has consistently issued directives and recommendations on tackling such events in the future. The official said that the power demand has increased in southern parts of the country while in the North the demand was low which has created an imbalance and frequency issue resulting tripping of the plants. The Ministry of Energy has said that a major power breakdown was reported across the country on Monday morning after the frequency of the national grid decreased.
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The system of frequency of the national grid went down at 7:34am on Monday which resulted in a countrywide power breakdown. Restoration of the system was progressing rapidly, it further said. Restoration work of grid stations has been started from Warsak and limited grid stations of Islamabad Electric Supply Company and Peshawar Electric Supply Company has been restored in an hour, it was further stated. The electricity has still not been fully restored across the country despite the passing of the government’s 10pm deadline, hampering businesses and the daily lives of more than 220 million people.