‘Militants behind power breakdown’

LAHORE: Power supply was restored on Sunday in various parts of the country after several hours when a major breakdown hit the national grid on the night between Saturday and Sunday, cutting the electricity supply to over 80 percent of the country.
The breakdown was triggered after terrorists blew up two power pylons in Naseerabad, Balochistan.It was the fourth incident in the last two months that crashed the national grid, including power generation units, in almost all parts of the country. At least two of the incidents were caused by technical snags while others are blamed on saboteurs and negligence. Whatever the reasons, sources said, it was very rare that such large-scale breakdowns had disrupted power supply in any part of the world so frequently.
Referring to the latest incident, an official of the National Transmission and Dispatch Company (NTDC) said terrorists blew up two power pylons — 75 and 76 — of the 220KVA main transmission line in the Notal area of Naseerabad, which disrupted the Uch-Sibbi-Quetta transmission line and generated a backward surge at Guddu junction resulting in a cascade, tripping almost the entire grid.
The NTDC officials said it was the third sabotage activity in Naseerabad in which power system had been targeted.Owing to an adverse impact, many power generating units tripped besides power transmission and distribution networks from Karachi in the south to Peshawar in the north.
As per an NTDC official, power supply to Islamabad, Peshawar, Lahore and other major cities has been restored by Sunday evening. Load is being increased gradually as the Guddu-Daddu circuit energised along with Islamabad power grid.
All independent power producers (IPPs), except AES PakGen, have started power generation.All public sector generation companies (Gencos) are also operating and increasing their loads gradually; however, the nuclear plants in Chashma will take some time to synchronise.
He said out of the total power generation being produced, the input of IPPs was 4,300MW, while the hydel share stood at 2,700MW and 500MW of electricity was being produced by Gencos.
He said it was expected that the Chashma I and II nuclear (650MW) and Muzaffargarh II and III (350MW) would be connected to the national grid on Sunday night.The spokesman said the demand currently stood at 12,000MW; therefore, the rest of the load was being managed with planned outages.
Agencies add: “The fault in the system was caused by a main transmission line being blown up in Balochistan,” Minister of State for Water and Power Abid Sher Ali claimed as he apologised for the outage.
Also, 600MW power supply from Muzaffargarh Thermal Power Station was suspended after loud explosions inside the plant.The country’s electricity distribution system is a complex — and delicate — web and a major fault at one section often leads to chain reactions and breakdowns of power generation and transmission.
Younas Dhaga, the top bureaucrat in the Water and Power ministry, told a press conference that 7,500MW of electricity had been injected into the system while more power would be added during the day as repair work was still in progress.
He said terrorists had recently blown up a gas pipeline and three power towers in Balochistan, which had resulted in long power outages. However, the gas pipeline had been repaired on an emergency basis and power supply to the national grid was restored, he added.
He said the ministry had taken up the security issue with the provincial governments for protecting power installations in the country. They had assured to take appropriate measures in this regard, he added.
Replying to a question, he denied there was any shortage of furnace oil in the country and added there was enough stock.
Dhaga added the government was investing in improvements in the distribution system to avoid future blackouts, but it would take up to three years to complete the task.
“We have increased the generation but did not invest in transmission nor developed any alternate system to divert the load,” Dhaga said.
In addition to chronic infrastructure problems, the energy sector is also trapped in a vicious cycle of “circular debt” brought on by the dual effect of the government setting low electricity prices and customers failing to pay for it.
State utilities therefore lose money, and cannot pay private power generating companies, which in turn cannot pay the oil and gas suppliers, who cut off the supply.
He said a new loadshedding plan would be implemented from today (Monday) under which relief will be provided to consumers. He said under the new plan there will be four-hour loadshedding for the industrial sector while six hours for urban population and eight hours for rural consumers.
Meanwhile, power supply has been restored to at least 95 percent areas of Karachi, according to a spokesman of K-Electric. He said nominal technical faults in the remaining five percent areas would be removed soon.
“The power outage was caused after an extra high-tension wire tripped,” K-Electric spokesman Usama Qureshi told the media soon after the power failure. Qureshi also clarified that the K-Electric was not responsible for the breakdown. “We have reports that entire Sindh is facing the blackout,” Qureshi added.
Experts say tripping or power-system protection is aimed at protection of electrical power systems from faults through the isolation of faulted parts from the rest of the electrical network.
The objective of a protection scheme is to keep the power system stable by isolating only the components that are under fault, whilst leaving as much of the network as possible still in operation.