Who is responsible for outage?
Electricity outage that lasted nearly 12 hours is a slap on
the face of utility companies involved in generation, transmission and
distribution companies of Pakistan. Experts have been warning that not
following good governance could plunge the country in complete darkness but no
one paid any attention. Not only that millions of people spent sleepless night
but millions of man-hours were also wasted. The delay in issuing any
clarification for the outage, gave birth to rumors like India has attacked and
it is a forced outage.
In the simplest words the ordeal started mainly because
demand exceeded supply and the system tripped. Ideally, this should have not
taken more than couple of hours had the system was in order. The initial
reports suggested that 4,000MW capacity was offline because power generation
companies didn't have the funds to purchase oil. This also nullifies the
perception being created by the incumbent government that demand exceeds
supply.
According to media reports the massive power breakdown
plunged major parts of the country into darkness late on Sunday night. From
Islamabad to Karachi, most major cities reported power outage. There was
suspension of electricity supply in Lahore, Gujranwala, Multan, Quetta,
Peshawar and Sukkur and other cities because of a major fault. In Karachi
alone, 36 grid stations tripped, plunging most of the city areas into complete
darkness. Many cities and towns in Sindh witnessed complete outage and most of
Balochistan was also without electricity.
The entire country suffered complete blackout, third in the
past ten years as the entire power generation, transmission and distribution
system collapsed. The domino effect led to tripping of power plants one after
another. The trauma started from Uch and Hubco plants having an aggregate generation
of around 1,750MW constituting almost 25 per cent of total national generation.
This led to tripping down of Mangla well as Tarbela dams. By midnight the
entire country was plunged into darkness as safety mechanism at all plants
switched them off to protect them from any damage.
At that time generation had dipped to less than 8,000MW,
with demand hovering above 13,000MW there was a deficit of 5,000MW. That was
too high a pressure on a system which has no backup. According to sector
experts the accident assumes a criminal negligence because there was no fuel to
run 4,000MW capacity. The only regret is that no lessons had been learnt from
the last two national breakdowns.
As media was desperate to find a clue to this outage all
sorts of replies were given. Initially, no one had the slightest realization of
the problem and in Karachi media was that there was a minor fault at Hubco due
to which load was shifted to Mangla and Tarbela grid stations, which also
tripped, causing a blackout across most of the country. Experts say tripping of
Mangla and Tarbela grid stations was natural because of overloading. Therefore,
this should not be considered a fault.
A large number of residents came out of their homes and
there was panic when people started receiving phone calls from their relatives
in other cities. Soon rumors started spreading that the blackout was the result
of a terrorist attack on the national grid system. There were also speculations
about a cyber attack on the system.
Though, prime minister has ordered an investigation, not
much can be expected. Whatever happened was the outcome of violation of
standard operating procedures and complete disregard to good governance. The
system could have sustained even higher losses, had it not shutdown.
Courtesy: The Financial Daily
