Power restored partially after nationwide outage in Pakistan
- 23 Jan 2023
Tariq Butt, Correspondent / Agencies
Pakistan's government began restoring power to millions of people late on Monday after a breakdown in the grid triggered the worst electricity outage in months and highlighted the weak infrastructure of the heavily indebted nation.
An inquiry has been launched into the outage, which began at around 7:00am local time and has so far lasted more than 12 hours during the peak winter season.
As evening drew on and homes were without electricity in the dark, Energy Minister Khurram Dastgir wrote on Twitter that authorities had started restoring power across the country. Dastgir had told reporters earlier: "We have faced some hurdles but we will overcome these hurdles, and will restore the power."
The outage, which the minister had said was due to a voltage surge, is the second major grid failure in three months, and adds to the blackouts that Pakistan's nearly 220 million people suffer on an almost-daily basis.
Power was beginning to return in parts of the capital Islamabad and the southwest province of Balochistan, said Dastgir.
According to the Ministry of Energy, the system of frequency of the national grid went down at 7:34am today resulting in a widespread breakdown in the system. "System maintenance work is progressing rapidly,” it tweeted.
The last major power outage, reported in October last year, took more than 12 hours to restore. The electricity blackout took out approximately 8,000MW from the system.
Dastgir also said the breakdown was not "major.” "In winter, the demand for electricity reduces nationwide, hence, as an economic measure, we temporarily close down our power generation systems at night. However, when the systems were turned on in the morning today, frequency variation and voltage fluctuation was observed in the south of the country; somewhere between Dadu and Jamshoro because of which power generating units shut down one by one,” he explained.
Dastgir said that the restoration of grid stations in Peshawar and Islamabad had begun. "I can assure you that power will be fully restored across the country within the next 12 hours,” he added.
Pakistan's largest city and economic hub Karachi is likely to see electricity restored in the next three to four hours, a spokesperson for K-Electric Ltd, the southern city's power provider, said.
Analysts and officials blame the power problems on an ageing electricity network, which like much of the national infrastructure, desperately needs an upgrade that the government says it can ill afford.
Localised power cuts are common in Pakistan and hospitals, factories and government institutions are often kept running by private generators. The machines are, however, beyond the means of most citizens and small businesses.
In parts of northern Pakistan, temperatures were due to drop below freezing on Monday night with supplies of natural gas — the most common heating method — also unreliable due to loadshedding.
The economy is already hobbled by rampant inflation, a falling rupee, and severely low forex reserves, with the power cut piling extra pressure on small businesses.
In the garrison city of Rawalpindi, homeware trader Muhammad Iftikhar Sheikh, 71, said he was unable to demonstrate electronic products to browsing customers.
"The customers never buy without testing first," he said. "All of us are sitting idle." Schools mostly continued either in the dark or using battery-powered lighting.
A shop owner in the southern port city Karachi, where temperatures were higher, told AFP he feared his entire dairy stock would spoil without refrigeration.
Thirty-nine-year-old printer Khurrum Khan said orders were piling up because of the blackout. Unreliable power is "a permanent curse which our governments have failed to overcome", Khan complained.
WIDESPREAD BREAKDOWN: According to the Ministry of Energy, the system of frequency of the national grid went down at 7:34am today resulting in a widespread breakdown in the system. “System maintenance work is progressing rapidly,” it tweeted. The last major power outage, reported in October last year, took more than 12 hours to restore. The electricity blackout took out approximately 8,000MW from the system.
NO FLIGHTS DISRUPTION: The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has said that there were no power problems at major airports across the country. “The situation is under control thanks to the alternative systems. We are using standby power to provide uninterrupted electricity to all the airports,” the CAA spokesperson said in a statement and added that the electricity supply at the Peshawar airport has been restored.
MOBILE TOWERS GO OFFLINE: Thousands of mobile phone towers have gone offline across Pakistan due to a nationwide power cut on Monday, an industry source told Reuters, raising the spectre of a telecommunications blackout in parts of the country.
The disruption has begun hitting the country’s approximately 40,000 telecommunication towers. The telecommunication industry source raised fears that if power is not switched back on soon, it could lead to a communications blackout as mobile phone towers run out of backup fuel and batteries. He added that service degradation had begun in some parts of the country as some towers went offline. Some social media users in Pakistan complained of mobile signals disappearing in major cities of the country, including Islamabad.
“No signals at the Karakoram apartments, Diplomatic Enclave, Islamabad,” former Senator Sehar Kamran said on Twitter. Separately, the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL), however, warned customers that they may face degradation in services due to the power outage.
“Once the power is restored, you will be able to enjoy uninterrupted PTCL services again,” the company said. In Lahore, a closing notice was posted on the Orange Line metro stations, with rail workers guarding the sites and trains parked on the rails. It was unknown when the metro system would be restored. Tariq