Power plant staff suspended after nationwide blackout
OUTAGE HIT ALL OF PAKISTAN’S MAJOR CITIES, LASTING AROUND 18 HOURS
Seven staff at one of Pakistan’s biggest power plants have been suspended after a technical fault sparked a massive grid breakdown at the weekend, plunging the entire country into darkness.
The blackout hit all of Pakistan’s major cities, including the capital Islamabad, economic hub Karachi and the secondlargest city Lahore, lasting around 18 hours inmost areas.
The employees at Guddu thermal power plant in Sindh province were suspended “on account of the negligence of duty”, according to the Central Power Generation Company, which operates the facility.
Cascading breakdowns
Guddu plant, built in the 1980s, is one of the country’s largest and generates power from furnace oil and natural gas. The suspended staff included a manager and six junior employees.
The blackout, which started shortly before midnight on Saturday, was caused by an engineering fault which tripped the system and caused power plants across the country to shut down. Pakistan’s electricity supply system is a complex and delicate web, and a problem in one section of the grid can lead to cascading breakdowns countrywide.
There were no reports of disruption at hospitals, however, which often rely on backup generators.
The blackout was reported a little before midnight by citizens on social media from across the country, including major urban centres such as Karachi, Islamabad, Lahore and Multan, as well as smaller towns and cities. In a tweet, the Ministry of Energy said power supply had been fully restored to the grid stations of the Peshawar Electric Supply Company ( Pesco) that were impacted by last night’s breakdown. It said grid stations operations teams had remained busy in restoration efforts through the night to protect the system from overloading.
Key supply line
The Ministry of Energy spokesperson, said that according to initial reports, the Guddu power plant developed a fault at 11: 41pm on Saturday night.
“The fault caused the country’s high transmission lines to trip, which in turn caused the system frequency to drop from 50 to 0 in less than a second. The drop in frequency caused power plants to shut down.”
The outage marked Pakistan’s second major power breakdown in less than three years.
In May 2018, power was partially disrupted for more than nine hours, while in 2015 an apparent rebel attack on a key supply line plunged around 80 per cent of the country into darkness.