National blackout

There is still some confusion about the cause of the breakdown that plunged the entire country into darkness on Saturday night. Initially, the government blamed it on an attack by Baloch separatists, claiming it took down a key transmission line. The Baloch Republic Army, however, said it only bombed two transmission lines in Nasirabad, which on its own should not have brought down the national grid. Then officials began changing their story and admitted the Guddu power plant’s transmission lines developed a fault which set off a chain reaction throughout the country. If that indeed is the case, this is yet another example of how badly we need to overhaul our power infrastructure. No single transmission line should be able to affect the entire national grid. Our transmission lines are already in such a state of decay that line losses significantly reduce the amount of electricity available to us. Nationwide blackouts are occurring with increased frequency – and should the current state of affairs continue we can expect them even more often in the future. A full 80 percent of the country had to do without electricity for the entire night and the repair work proceeded at an extremely slow pace with many homes not having their power restored for more than 12 hours.
Given the gas and petrol crises we are currently going through, in addition to the ever-present electricity loadshedding, even the explanation of a technical fault will not be accepted by all. It is no secret that there is a shortage of furnace oil in the country so it wouldn’t come as a surprise to find out we had run out of furnace oil, just as we ran out of petrol. Power plants are running well below their usual capacity, leading to increased loadshedding in the country. The circular debt crisis, where the government is unable to collect electricity bills and in turn cannot pay power generating companies who then have their supply of power cut off by oil and gas suppliers, will hit our ability to produce electricity just as it hurt us at the pump. Because of this we are only generating 7000MW of electricity, exactly half the demand. The government dissembled so blatantly during the petrol shortages that no one will trust a word of explanation it gives. Even if this latest incident can be attributed solely to technical faults this may be a preview of our dystopian future.