Lights out: Power outage cripples Lahore

LESCO, NTDC blame each other as more than half of the city suffers


Shahram Haq December 09, 2016

LAHORE: Troubles continue to plague Pakistan’s power transmission system despite the government’s repeated claims of improvements.

As the foggy season hit central Punjab and other parts of the province, main transmission lines stuck true to the tradition of repeated tripping.

New electricity projects pursued round the clock: NTDC MD

On Friday morning, a 220KV transmission line at Kala-Shah-Kaku grid station tripped due to intense fog, leaving half of Pakistan’s second largest city without electricity for almost five hours.

Instead of coming up with a solution, the National Transmission and Despatch Company (NTDC) and the Lahore Electric Supply Company (Lesco) entered into a game of tit for tat.

The officials of both companies were not ready to take responsibility for a fault in their transmission line.

A spokesman for Lesco said that a 220KV transmission line at Kala-Shah-Kaku grid station tripped at around 3.25am on Friday morning, following which half of the grids of the company tripped, leaving most parts of Lahore in the dark.

NTDC officials said it was Lesco’s 132Kv transmission line which tripped initially; following which NTDC’s 220kv grid tripped and was immediately shut down to save the system.

An NTDC spokesperson said the dense fog caused tripping of 132kV transmission line of Lesco. Its impact was reflected to the connected 220 kV network of NTDC. The cut-off load caused system over-voltage and tripping of NTDC System.

The spokesperson added said that the NTDC protection system operated in a timely manner and saved the equipment from damage. It prevented a countrywide cascading effect and system collapse. The affected portion of the NTDC transmission system was completely restored by 11 am on Friday. The Lesco system, however, was restored later at 3 pm as the staff started restoring effected grids at around 9.10am after the dense fog started fading.

The government of Pakistan and the Federal Ministry for Water and Power both repeatedly claimed that they are investing in an upgrade of the transmission system which experts say is in a dilapidated condition. They said that this was the first tripping for this winter and an inquiry will reveal the facts.

Got extra power? LESCO will happily buy from you

The intensity of this blackout was limited unlike the past two years when fog often hit the 500KVA Muzaafargarh-Multan transmission lines and left half the country without power for hours.

Lesco spokesman said smog recently hit Lahore and its suburbs, adding it was one of the reasons, along with the fog, that caused high-transmission lines to trip.

“Smog leaves carbon on the disks which results in tripping on main transmission lines”, the spokesman concluded.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 10th, 2016.

COMMENTS (2)

imran | 7 years ago | Reply As LESCO confirms “Smog leaves carbon on the disks which result in tripping on main transmission lines”, my question is if they were aware of the problem , why they did not manage disk washing after smoggy weather as they were knowledgeful about the coming worst foggy weather.
Rebirth | 7 years ago | Reply Privatize parts of Lesco. The translation wires and transformers are from the 40s.
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