Power outages to continue until nuclear plants restored to full capacity

ISLAMABAD: In the wake of massive power blackout in Pakistan occurs frequently due to a lack of funds to upgrade ageing infrastructure, Federal Minister for Energy Khurram Dastgir Khan said that power outages will be continued until nuclear plants restored to full capacity.

Addressing the media, Khan said that an additional load shedding could continue for two more days until the nuclear power plants at Chashma and Karachi are restored to full capacity

The minister also said that Pakistan government has ordered an audit to identify weaknesses in transmission system across the country and would soon introduce new technologies and practices to ensure power breakdowns are geographically contained and have ‘black start’ facility for quick recovery of the entire national grid, Down quoted him as saying.

“There was a delay in synchronization between Tarbela and Mangla power plants on the day of power breakdown. It was realized that there should be black start facility at various power plants and somewhere in the middle of the transmission system to promptly re-energize power system from two sides in case of any future incident,” Down,” a Pakistan based publication reported.

Khan also said that maximum power production was in the southern part of the country and major demand centers were in the north, but except Lahore-Matiari transmission line, no other transmission system had any inbuilt security mechanism to isolate breakdowns from other parts.

Electricity supply was restored incrementally in Pakistan on Tuesday after a nationwide power breakdown left millions of people without electricity amidst fears of default and looming economic meltdown due to a balance of payment crisis in the country.

The massive power blackout on Monday was the second such outage in nearly four months.

Pakistan is grappling with one of the country’s worst economic crises in recent years amid dwindling foreign exchange reserves. The crisis forced the government earlier this month to order shopping malls and markets to close by 8:30 pm for energy conservation purposes.

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