‘Upgraded’ Lesco system collapses even before high demand

LAHORE: The so-called “upgraded” system of the Lahore Electric Supply Company faltered even before typical high demand of the summer, resulting in prolonged outages in the heart of the city.

 The populated areas of the city including posh localities were out of power for hours on Thursday night and Friday due to overloading of the distribution system, rendering people of the areas high and dry in hot weather. The power supply to many parts of Model Town, Garden Town and Kot Lakhpat was cut off abruptly at around 9pm on Thursday despite the fact that Lesco had unofficially announced minimal outages on Shab-e-Barat. According to sources, close to 100 feeders were down due to various types of breakdowns and overloading of the system.

The power supply could not be restored for one and a half hours at least. Despite repeated contacts, no Lesco official was available for rectifying the problem due to the fact that there was no mechanism in place to address complaints. An official deputed for attending calls of the chief executive responded later as he woke up to the fact that a major part of the city was out of power. He did not have any information about the failure of the power distribution system.

The State Minister for Water and Power and the Lesco Chief Executive himself have time and again claimed upgradation of the power distribution system at  the cost of billions of rupees. However, it seems that even before high demand of hot and humid weather and addition of a new power generation system, Lesco’s power infrastructure proved too fragile to handle the situation.

Sources confirmed that the system was overloaded. Later, when the system stabilized, Lesco started getting 2,840MW against the demand of 3,300MW. The demand would jump to over 5,000MW in coming days and it is a multi-million dollar question that how the distribution system would respond to the challenge.

 An official commented that Lesco was not properly doing load rationalisation to overcome the problem of overloading of the system.

 Meanwhile, according to the official power demand and supply position recorded on the night of Thursday when Lesco’s power system was under severe stress, the national demand was 19,973MW against generation of 15,583MW, showing a shortfall of 4,390MW. As per official claims, there was no unscheduled loadshedding in the country. The official did not comment on Lesco’s prolonged outages when his attention was drawn towards the overloaded system, lack of monitoring by the management and poor customer service of the company.