Lights out: Sukkur residents face 15-hour power cuts

SUKKUR:

Most of Sukkur has been suffering through long power suspension since Thursday, when a heavy-duty transformer of the SITE grid station developed a fault.

The fault in the transformer is said to have occurred due to the overloading of feeders and may take around 15 days to fix. Residents living in the areas of the affected feeders are facing around 12 to 15 hours of power cuts daily.

A grid station official confirmed that the transformer, which has a capacity of over 20 megawatts, has developed an internal fault. “The transformer has been overloaded for the past couple of years and we have requested the relevant officers to shift some of its load to a larger transformer but it has not been done as of yet,” he said. “It seems that an insulation problem has occurred in the transformer, which is making it trip.”

The Sukkur Electric Power Company superintendent operations engineer, Abdul Ghaffar Mako, told The Express Tribune that considerable damage has been caused to the transformer. According to him, some of the feeders were being shifted to a heavy-duty transformer that has a 40-megawatt capacity.

Mako added that the test results of the faulty transformer are being sent to the transformer reclamation laboratory in Lahore and it may take between 10 to 12 days to normalise the situation. However, he claimed that alternative arrangements have been made to minimise the sufferings of the residents.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 10^th, 2014.