LAHORE, March 25: People in most parts of Punjab — from Rawalpindi to Multan — and in Islamabad besides some areas of the NWFP suffered a power breakdown for almost seven hours following a sudden tripping of the 500KV Gatti-Muzaffargarh transmission line at about 9 on Tuesday morning.
“The tripping was caused by a sudden removal of load and absence of a back-up line on the section. The problem spread to other transmission lines after Pepco’s protection system was activated,” Pakistan Electric Power Company managing director Munawwar Baseer told reporters in the evening.
“Had we had a back-up line, which was to be completed in 2000 but is expected to become operational in May this year, we would not have faced today’s breakdown,” he said.
Pepco said the tripping had put 2500MW of electricity or around 30 per cent of the total supply out of its system.
It was the second major power breakdown experienced by the people in the central and upper Punjab and parts of the NWFP in about 18 months. The last such breakdown had occurred in September 2006 when supply to the entire country, except Karachi, was cut. And it took Wapda up to three days to fully restore supply.
“Sindh, Balochistan and some parts of Punjab and the NWFP escaped the breakdown this time owing to the separation of transmission lines for these parts after the 2006 experience,” Mr Baseer said.
Pepco has formed a five-member committee to pinpoint reasons for the breakdown. Mr Baseer said the committee had been given 72 hours to complete its inquiry and submit a report.
People in the affected areas had to face a great deal of inconvenience because the prolonged power breakdown also affected water supply.
Pepco claimed to have restored power supply to the affected areas in the NWFP by noon and in Punjab by 3.15pm. But some areas in Lahore were still without power when the Pepco chief was explaining reasons of the breakdown in the evening.
The power supply to Islamabad where Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani was to take oath of office at the presidency in the morning was restored in 55 minutes.
Mr Baseer promised to modernise and upgrade the 25-year-old control and protection mechanism for better system protection and said no damage was done to the distribution system by the tripping.
NEW PROJECTS: Mr Baseer claimed that at least 1700-1800MW of electricity would be added to the system as new rental and thermal generation projects would become operational by the end of this year. He said that a conservation campaign drive was also helping save energy during peak consumption hours.
Answering a question, the Pepco chief said the country’s largest utility had suffered a loss of Rs57 billion on account of tariff differential last year and of Rs20 billion this year. The government was paying Rs25 billion to provide cheap electricity to consumers and helping Pepco to obtain loans for overcoming its financial problems. He said loans of Rs32 billion had already been obtained. “We will have to borrow another Rs20 billion (during this financial year),” he said.
Our Correspondent in Haripur adds: Officials said that all five power generating units at the Tarbela Powerhouse were shut down, suspending supply to transmission lines of the 1450MW Ghazi Barotha power project, Mardan, Islamabad, Peshawar, Rawat and Burhan.
Chief engineer Khurshid Anwar Khan attributed the breakdown to some faults in the 500KV line of the Multan region. “It was a fault in the system rather than in the power generating machines that caused the outage,” he said, adding that the system was directly linked to the National Power Grid and any fault in the main transmission lines stopped the power generation process.
He said that supply to the 220KV lines of Mardan, Burhan, Ghazi Baotha and Islamabad had been restored, allowing the Ghazi Barotha Powerhouse to resume generation.
According to Mr Khan, at the time of the breakdown five units of Tarbela were generating 265MW of electricity.
He said that reservoir at Tarbela was being maintained at its dead level of 1,369 feet for 13 days and the Indus River System Authority was getting water on the basis of the run of river which stood at 19,900 cusecs on Tuesday.
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