Daily Times

It was the year’s first significant breakdown, and the worst in the country’s breakdown-ridden history, with the entire country initially running on backups, then without electricity for hours. Despite Minister of Energy Khurram Dastgir’s assertions that electricity will be entirely restored by 10pm, the country had not returned to normal by the time we went to the press at 10pm. For hours, the power corridors were unaware of the source of the problem, and it was later revealed that the large power outage was caused by “frequency fluctuation” in the national grid. The national grid’s system frequency was turned off due to an unexpected voltage and frequency fluctuation in the North-South transmission corridor.

The minister believes that the disruption is not major. Let us call it a minor breakdown, but we should be aware of why, year after year, countrywide power outages occur despite a significant increase in power production to the system. This prompted the National Transmission and Despatch Company (NTDC) to conduct a highly technical study to examine fault lines and suggest options, both in the Northern and Southern transmission systems to avoid future power outages. The transmission system, as well as the production units, both hydraulic and thermal, require considerable reworking, and the NTDC should think broadly about revitalizing the transmission system. A complete exercise should be conducted to first study the causes of the recent back-to-back power outages and then devise methods to prevent such outages in the future. Power breakdowns are frequently the result of a lack of controls and checks and poor coordination among departments. The resulting panic adds to the pandemonium. There should be work to improve transmission lines among all distribution and generation businesses, and management should be directed to quickly contact stakeholders in order to create the SOP for dealing with future emergency scenarios.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has taken notice of the country’s power disruption and formed a high-level committee to investigate the source of the disaster. The National Electric Power Regulatory Authority also took serious notice of the nationwide power outage. It remains to be seen how quickly the probe committees review the report and how frequently the NTDC conducts such exercises. The next study should investigate the benefits and drawbacks of splitting the northern and southern systems into no more than seven distinct clusters in order to avoid the cascading effect of such breakdowns. Catastrophes typically leave a path of chance, and this power outage must give a ray of optimism for the transmission system’s security and stability. *