Power breakdown

A crippling 12-hour power breakdown was eventually overcome by rerouting supplies

A crippling 12-hour power breakdown that afflicted much of the southern part of the country, and also including the two most populous cities of Karachi and Lahore, was eventually overcome by rerouting supplies, the Ministry of Energy claimed on Thursday. However, residents of several parts of Karachi were surprised to hear this, as they still had not gotten power back till early Friday morning. But setting aside the problems the government had with the fix, we are more concerned by the original problem, which the ministry initially called an “accidental fault” and explained away as a cascade that caused disruptions at several plants.

Hours later, Energy Minister Khurram Dastgir undercut the ministry’s earlier statement by explicitly refusing to call it an accident, which would imply either sabotage or incompetence, neither of which inspires confidence. However, he did hint at the possibility of human error being responsible and assured “appropriate action” if this were the case. Dastgir also said the “fault” in two 500 KV power lines near Karachi took 8,000 MW off the grid, meaning that, roughly, over 20% of national production was inaccessible or offline for several hours. Initial reports blamed prolonged outages as far north as Faisalabad and well into Balochistan on the fault, although sporadic reports of outages even further upcountry were also reported.

While a detailed inquiry report won’t be available at least till after the weekend, it was disappointing that the fact only half the country went dark is being played as a good thing, yet no details are offered on how the government will end the frequent recurrence of nationwide outages attributed to cascades of plants tripping. On that same note, turning off the power for half the country is more than an accident — it is gross negligence and institutional failure deserving of action against much more than the individuals directly responsible.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 15^th, 2022.

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