Rare outage plunges Karachi into darkness

KARACHI:

A large part of Karachi plunged into darkness soon after Iftar on Saturday as some of the Karachi Electric Supply Company’s (KESC) transmission lines tripped.

Two 220 KV lines and three 132 kV lines stopped working, causing problem at 20 of KESC’s 60 grid stations, the company said.

The brunt was faced by southern parts of the city including Clifton, Defence, Saddar, PECHS and surrounding areas.

Power faults at such a scale have become rare in the past two years since privately-run KESC resorts to area-wise outages whenever there is a shortfall.

Experts, however, said the trips suggest that decades-old transmission system still needs improvement.  Power was intermittently restored to some areas but the blackout persisted in large parts till the filing of this report.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 5^th, 2012.