With reference to the article published on March 17, 2008, Pakistan Electric Power Co (PEPCO) clarifies that disconnection of power supply to the KESC was undertaken under a well considered and phased procedure with issuance of due prior warnings after posting of notice upon notice with the final being issued on March 01, 2008.

The MD PEPCO also wrote to the MD KESC directly on March 5, 2008 pointing towards the continued non-response to the NTDC notices and the impending disconnection.

Thereafter, NTDC’s National Power Control Centre again forewarned The KESC of the imminent disconnection at 7.00 am on March 6, 2008 and then proceeded to effect the actual disconnection by cutting-off one source at a time out of the available four.

Unfortunately, instead of reducing its load, the KESC operators loaded the left over sources. The actual load, when the fourth of the sources viz NKI-Baldia Circuit was disconnected at 8.03 a.m, was 260 MW only which is just 15 per cent of the total KESC loading at that time and 10-12 per cent of the utility’s full system capabilities.

Disconnection of such level of load is normal and similar to the situation when a large generating unit goes off-line in any utility. As such, the disconnection of 260 MW could not ever cause the alleged outage and collapse of the KESC system. Here the case in point is the sabotage incident of January 1, 2008 at 500 KV Jamshoro-NKI Transmission Line, because of which KESC abruptly lost 390 MW supply from NTDC and thus the supply came down from the 520 MW pre-sabotage to 130 MW post-sabotage level.

The loss in supply was thus far in excess of the loss of 260 MW supply on March 6, 2008, but KESC did not experience total outage and in fact kept operating normally without any noticeable effect.

It appears that on March 06, 2008, KESC may have intentionally raised hue and cry and to blame Wapda, PEPCO, NTDC and the government. We believe that such an action by KESC, which can be verified through operational scrutiny of data by the regulator, NEPRA, raises major questions about the role and conduct of the KESC management in this affair.

The KESC should have been able to restore the system in a much shorter time rather than taking a full day. In addition to the two IPPs which have the capacity of cold/black start. KESC also gets supply from gas turbine units in the city, SITE and Korangi areas which are capable of cold/black start.

The system thus could easily have been prevented from collapse. It is not difficult to manage any abrupt removal of a load of about 250-300 MW or so in a system with 1800-2200 MW capacity.

It is also clarified that supply to KESC was resumed by the NTDC at 09:37 am, where-after as much as 300 MW was drawn by the KESC. However, KESC had never registered a demand of 750 MW with the NTDC. There is no commercial sale or purchase agreement between the NTDC and the KESC.

Incidentally, the proposed draft communicated by the NTDC to the KESC ( after privatization) in 2005 has as yet to come back which shows the commitment of the power utility serving Karachi – PEPCO was not responsible for the system collapse or any late restoration of the system and that the disconnection was not abrupt or without issuance of due notices.

Pakistan Electric Power Company (EPCO)

Lahore