Large swathes of country in the dark as national grid collapses

ICUs at hospitals being run on generators while flights face delays due to the power outage in Lahore


Shahram Haq December 12, 2014

LAHORE: Large swathes of the country observed a power breakdown on Friday, as the national grid system collapsed reportedly due to low frequency ratio.

The whole country, save Karachi and Hyderabad, was rendered without electricity at around 12:50 pm. Restoration work started immediately; however, most parts of the country are still without electricity.

According to Express News, hospitals in Lahore and Lahore airport suffered blackouts leading to flight delays while ICUs and emergencies in hospitals were being run on generators.

Earlier, it was reported that due to the immense load on the national grid, the frequency dropped from 50Mh to 47Mh, which had an immediate cascading effect on the system, resulting in a failure of the main Ghazi-Barotha hydel project.

Initially, the cause of the breakdown was termed “routine” but later it was discovered that it was owing to a technical fault either at Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) or at a National Transmission and Dispatch company.

The departments are uncertain from which end the fault has risen. Wapda said the power outage might be an issue of low frequency by National Power Control Center, which resulted in a technical failure at various power stations. However, the National Transmission and Dispatch company said that there was a fault in the powerhouse which disrupted the power system.

However, the first preference of Water and Power Ministry is to restore the national grid and later investigate whether Wapda, NTDC or NPCC is responsible for the fault.

Updates

Power begins to return in parts of Lahore, Islamabad, Peshawar, Gujranwala and Faisalabad.

The Ministry of Water and Power said priority grids are those providing electricity to hospitals and airports and will be the first to be restored. However, electricity in many residential areas of Lahore has also been restored.

Further, the ministry has said it will take some time before the restoration process will be complete.

.................................................................................................................................................

Ministry for Water and Power spokesperson said that reportedly faults occurred at Tarbela power house, which affects 500 KV transmission lines.

However, he said that the 220 KV transmission lines were not affected. 220 KV lines are linked with Independent Power Producers (IPP), where as 500KV is on hydel.]

“This resulted in a power outage from Tarbella to Guddu,” he said, adding, “The National grid has been restored successfully with a frequency of 50Mh and till 6PM, 6000 MW of electricity was restored, and we will restore 10,000Mw. We are restoring electricity from North to South and are hopeful that 10,000Mw electricity will be restored by 9:00pm.”

COMMENTS (18)

Bahadurkhan | 9 years ago | Reply

@Patriot dear patriot. If indian side had sparking, is it connected to pakistan grid ? Verify and then comment. If power was badly needed why was Rental Raja harassed. Perhaps he could have set up a river based power generating station near kasur.

Naresh | 9 years ago | Reply

@unbelievable: Meanwhile in other news Pakistan’s long awaiting LNG deal fell apart . Is it the deal with Qatar? . Cheers

VIEW MORE COMMENTS
Replying to X

Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.

For more information, please see our Comments FAQ