KARACHI, Sept 12: As the mercury rose to 42.1 degrees Celsius with 20 per cent humidity on Friday, there were reports of widespread power outages in the city caused by a fire in some power sub-stations and gas turbines due to excessive load on the fragile transmission system of the power utility.

There were at least two outbreaks of fire at the installations of the KESC – one at its sub-station in Khori Garden and another at its gas turbines at Bilal Chowrangi in Korangi. Fire engines rushed to both the places to extinguish the fire and save the system from further damage.

Indifferent to the consumers’ plight and the promises made by the Karachi Electric Supply Company, the privatised management preferred to cut generation to save on its fuel cost. Enraged consumers blamed the utility’s foreign management for deliberately dealing a debilitating blow to the country’s economic hub.

Little improvement in the generation and transmission system resulted in the prolonged outages in the city, sources say, adding that the situation would worsen after the mid of Ramazan when at least 60 megawatts would be required for shopping centres and mosques.

Miseries of electricity consumers continued overnight and the situation deteriorated further in the morning when power supply to various localities was suspended for about two hours with an interval of 45 minutes or so. In effect consumers in some localities got electricity for only five hours during the day.

To meet the city’s power demand that surged to 2,400 megawatts during the last 24 hours, the KESC resorted to load-shedding to the tune of more than 500MWs.

All the six units of Bin Qasim Thermal Power Station of the KESC could only produce 800MWs against the required output of 1160MWs since the privatised management opted to reduce generation to save on its fuel cost.

With one of its generation units out of order for many days, the Korangi Thermal Power Plant of the KESC could not produce more than 70MWs. The desalination plant in Defence has also suspended generation of around 80MWs.

Wapda provided around 450MWs electricity to the KESC through the national grid, while the Karachi Nuclear Power Plant generated 80MWs electricity.

In almost every residential locality in the city, there has been power load-shedding up to five times a day with power supply getting disrupted each time for over two hours.

Among other affected quarters, residents of Block-1 in Gulshan-i-Iqbal suffered a major power failure from 4am till 11am on Friday, while power supply was again suspended at 1.30pm for several hours in the locality. There were also problems of frequent tripping in different parts of the city reportedly due to mismanagement of load distribution.

The KESC management had earlier told the government that it was operating its generation units below average capacity because the utility was not getting adequate gas supply from the SSGC. The shortage of gas had brought the utility under heavy financial losses for keeping the power generation units operating on high-priced furnace oil. Though the KESC failed to clear its dues the gas supply was fully restored, yet the situation of power generation did not improve.

Insiders say that power shortfall is unavoidable as the gas pressure is not capable of keeping the burners at full blast. Each day there is a regular shortfall of 250 MWs, they say, adding that there are at least 36 burners in a unit of which hardly six to eight burners could be kept on gas while the rest are run with furnace oil.

The Korangi Thermal Power Plant’s old and other new units are totally gas-operated while the units at the Bin Qasim Thermal Power Station are dual cycle though they could not be operated at a required speed with gas, says an official.

There is a between 250MWs and 300MWs natural shortfall of power while the gas pressure has caused further 200MWs to 300MWs less power generation.