Guddu in spotlight after Sunday’s power breakdown

LAHORE: The Guddu power house came into the spotlight after yet another major power breakdown on Sunday, hitting three provinces.

The Guddu power house in Sindh is a public sector enterprise working under the Power Division.

The power plant stopped functioning after a 500-KV transmission line caught fire due to a technical fault.

The halt of power generation has had a cascading effect on the national grid in Sindh, Balochistan and southern Punjab, shutting down in succession. Resultantly, the supply to Guddu, Kashmore, Jacobabad, Shikarpur, Sohbatpur and Dera Murad Jamali came to a halt.

A spokesperson for the National Transmission and Dispatch Company (NTDC) said owing to the dense fog, the 500kV and 220kV transmission lines in the vicinity of Guddu faced tripping. During the period, one of the poles of 500kV circuit breaker was damaged. The faulty part was immediately isolated from the healthy system and the switch yard was energized.

The damaged part is being replaced and work is being completed on a war footing.

Moreover, investigation is also underway to check the root cause of damage to the pole of circuit-breaker, the spokesperson concluded.

Two major power breakdowns occurred in the country last year in which the Guddu power house somehow or the other played a role.

In addition to December 31, 2023 power breakdown, a countrywide power breakdown happened on January 23, 2023 that was blamed on power load disbalance in the north.

Intriguingly, it was at least the seventh time that a major power breakdown plunged various parts of the country in darkness on Sunday and Guddu Power Plant triggered or played a role in the collapse of the national grid.

Back on October 13, 2022, the southern parts of the country, mainly Sindh, Punjab, and Balochistan, were left without electricity due to a glitch in a power station, resulting in a massive breakdown of electricity affecting many cities of Punjab, including Lahore, and several in Sindh, including Karachi.

As many as six units tripped due to a technical glitch in Guddu Thermal Power Station that led to the collapse of the grid.

On January 9, 2021, a major blackout overnight plunged much of the country into darkness. The power breakdown left all major cities, including Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi without electricity for hours.

The then Power Minister Omar Ayub Khan confirmed that the shutdown was caused by a “technical fault” at the Guddu power plant in southern Pakistan. Later, officials also blamed human error for the collapse of the national grid.

The National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) imposed a fine of Rs50 million on the NTDC for the countrywide electricity blackout in January 2021.

Earlier, a fact-finding committee pointed out a fault in the switchyard of 747MW Guddu power plant that led to tripping of some other plants, leaving the entire Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and parts of Sindh and Balochistan without electricity for many hours on May 16, 2018.

On December 12, 2014, large swathes of the country were in the dark for six hours following a massive breakdown at the national power grid. The power ministry submitted an interim report on the breakdown to the then premier leading to the suspension of three top officials at the Guddu power plant.

On May 26, 2013, power supply to most of the cities and towns of Upper Sindh, Balochistan and some parts of Punjab was disrupted due to the tripping of all units of Guddu Thermal Power Station.

In a separate incident involving Guddu Power Plant on July 15, 2022, Genco Holding Company Limited (GHCL) constituted a committee to inquire into the fire at the Guddu Power Plant – an incident that caused a loss of Rs15 billion to the national exchequer.

It is pertinent to mention that several power breakdowns occurred in peak winter when much of electricity was being generated from the thermal plants in the south to feed power load-centers in the north.