ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Power, Petroleum and Natural Resources Omar Ayub Khan has said that gradual restoration of the power supply is underway after a massive power breakdown plunged the entire country into darkness minutes before midnight on Saturday.
While addressing a press conference with Information Minister Shibli Faraz today, the minister said that complete restoration will take some time; however, the majority of areas have been energized while K-Electric has been provided with 400 MW for Karachi.
Omar Ayub said a technical fault was reported at the Guddu power plant at 11:41 pm last night when the frequency fell from 50 to zero in seconds.
He said that a fault occurred at Guddu power station at 2341 hrs, dropping the frequency to zero within a second and 10,302 MW were pulled out of the system.
While accusing past governments of ignoring transmission, he said faults occur due to out-date system as no effort was made in the past to upgrade transmission lines.
During the tenure of PML-N, transmission lines were able to handle no more than 18500 MW. Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government has increased the capacity to more than 23,000 MW, he added.
The energy minister said, “The PTI government is spending over three hundred billion rupees to upgrade transmission system for smooth power supply”.
He further said that an investigation into the outage has been launched however, the exact nature of fault can only be ascertained after a reduction in fog.
It is worth mentioning here that Pakistan was hit by a massive power blackout early Sunday. The National Power Control Center (NPCC) had said that a technical fault in the system caused the major power breakdown in several parts of the country.
As per details, several parts of the country, including Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore, suffered a mass breakdown on late Saturday night.
Islamabad’s red zone among major cities of the country plunged into darkness after the power breakdown. Karachi’s 60 percent area was without electricity as the K-Eclectic system collapsed after the Jamshoro transmission line tripped.
