KARACHI/HYDERABAD: Almost half of Sindh, including Karachi, plunged into darkness when a technical fault in the national grid wreaked havoc on the ill-maintained transmission and distribution systems of K-Electric and Hyderabad Electric Supply Company (Hesco) in the small hours of Sunday before the first sehri of Ramazan.

Besides a major part of Karachi, cities and towns in 13 districts of Sindh, including Hyderabad, Badin, Shaheed Benazirabad and Mirpur­khas, remained without electricity from 2.45am till afternoon, causing hardship and agony to a large number of people who had to fast in the very hot and humid weather.

In some of the affected areas in Karachi, Badin, Mirpurkhas, etc, enraged people took to the streets in protest over the failure of the power utilities in maintaining uninterrupted power supply.

The sudden and prolonged electricity breakdown caused an acute water shortage in Karachi as major pumping stations of the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board also went without power.

Almost 70 per cent of Karachi was affected by the breakdown. The restoration of electricity began after around three hours and at 12.55pm, K-Electric claimed in a Twitter posting that “Karachi has now been fully normalised after the power interruption caused by tripping in the Extra High Tension Jamshoro 500kV line”.

But the 13 districts being fed power by Hesco remained without power till evening as the utility’s system was not restored until Iftar hours as complaints continued to pour in about non-supply of electricity.

Hesco authorities explained that they had to exercise a load management plan to keep the system going and avoid any other major fault which might worsen the situation.

A Hesco spokesman said it was a transmission fault originating at the National Transmission and Despatch Company (NTDC)’s 500kv grid station located adjacent to the Jamshoro Thermal Power Plant off Jamshoro-Sehwan road.

He explained that the EHT tripping hit the Jamshoro Thermal Power Plant, Lakhra Coal Power plant, gas-powered Kotri power house, Hubco and Nooriabad’s windmill power plant. As electricity generation at these plants stopped the entire Hesco region and KE system went without power for hours.

The power utility managed to energise its system through 132kv power supplies form Rohri at Daulatpur. This helped Hesco energise the Jamshoro power house, then Kotri, Nooriabad and Hubco. Finally, the back-feeding of electricity from Rohri had gradually come to an end and generation resumed from the affected power plants at around 5.15am.

Later, the spokesman said, Hesco started energising its grid stations but the Regional Control Central (RCC) in Jamshoro advised it not to use full 11kv electricity load until the system was fully normalised.

The 76 grid stations of Hesco remained without power until 10am. The system was normalised at 12noon but the authorities resorted to load management in line with the RCC’s guidelines.

Hesco is currently getting 680 megawatts against a demand of 800MW. In order to bridge the demand-supply gap, the power utility was carrying out loadshedding for four hours in urban centres and six hours in rural areas.

A spokesman for the NTDC told Dawn from Lahore that a preliminary investigations showed that both 500 kV transmission lines from the Hubco power plant did not trip because of a transmission fault, but the tripping occurred due to a transfer trip signal from the Hubco power plant.

The NTDC asked the Hubco authorities to investigate the exact cause of tripping from their end, he added.

He said that NTDC engineers managed to energise the 220 kV KDA- Jamshoro power system and 500 kV Karachi-NKI-Hubco link at 4.30am. Later, Unit 4 of the Hubco power plant was connected with 500 kV NKI grid at 7.40am.

He said that power system gradually got normalised after Hubco and Jamshoro got online at 8.05am.

The latest breakdown aggravated the problem in Dadu, Shikarpur, Jamshoro and Guddu areas, where 16 towers of 500 KVA fell due to a heavy storm on May 21 and the repair work was still incomplete.

Updating about the repair work, the NTDC spokesman said that seven towers of 500 kV Dadu-Guddu transmission line had been erected on Sunday and four quad bundles conductors were being repaired/replaced. The transmission line would be energised in a minimum possible time, he added.

KE office in SITE attacked, vehicles damaged

Perturbed over the prolonged power failure and long spells of loadshedding, enraged people staged a protest demonstration in front of a K-Electric office in SITE.

Police said scores of people, including workers of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, shouted anti-government slogans and damaged vehicles parked outside the office.

SITE SP Asif Ahmed Bughio said police rushed to the scene, dispersed the mob and managed to arrest three PTI workers on a complaint of KE officials.

Later, the held workers were released after the officials of the power utility told the police that they did not want to pursue the case, the SP said.

Published in Dawn, May 29th, 2017