“KESC is not receiving any electricity from Kanupp since Saturday morning,” said KESC’s spokesperson Amir Abbasi while talking to The Express Tribune. He explained that normally the plant supplies 80 megawatts of electricity to the grid, adding “we do not expect the plant to resume operations before Monday.”
Kanupp shut down on October 24 and remained offline until November 2. However, soon after coming online, the plant was forced to shut down again on November 4 due to technical problems.
“The plant has lived its useful life,” commented power sector analyst Nurali Barkatali. “Now it is only running with the help of constant maintenance and even with that, problems are bound to arise,” he added.
However, the disruption is not expected to hamper the supply of electricity to the city. “The demand for electricity remained relatively low on Saturday because most businesses and industries stayed shut even after Eid holidays,” said Abbasi.
He stressed that there were no outages throughout the three days of Eid, adding the schedule of announced power outages will not be implemented until Monday when businesses are expected to resume activity.
“We are anticipating low demand on Sunday as well so there should not be any outages,” he said.
Kanupp, a single unit nuclear power plant, is located about 15 miles west of Karachi. According to the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC), the plant has been in commercial operation since 1972 and had an initial installed capacity of 137 megawatts. However, KESC officials assert that Kanupp supplies around 80 megawatts to the power company.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 21st, 2010.
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