Two inquiries were conducted after the 9th January’s country-wide blackout: one by a 3-member committee that was ordered by NEPRA; and the other by the NTDC. NEPRA’s inquiry report is available in the public domain on its web site. The inquiry conducted by the NTDC on the above incident is not available in public domain but its major findings have been widely reported in the media.
NEPRA’s report attributes triggering of this blackout episode to a human error—closing of a power circuit-breaker in Guddo Power Station’s switchyard after its repair without first removing the “earthing” that had been established for a similar repair work on another power circuit-breaker in the same switchyard. While this may be true and a case of gross negligence of Guddo Power Station’s staff, this does not absolve the other entities, particularly the NTDC, from the responsibility of failure of their own protection schemes on that power station and in the systems upstream for not isolating the faulty part from the rest of the grid.
The NEPRA Inquiry Report also highlights the causes of the previous blackouts in Pakistan and the remedial actions that were recommended to be taken by relevant entities to prevent similar incidents from recurring. Virtually, the cause of every previous blackout was traced back to lack of proper execution of the “Under Frequency Load Shedding (UFLS) Schemes”. A UFLS scheme triggers an automatic dropping of load when system frequency declines below a pre-specified threshold.
While this demonstrates the shallow thinking of our technical experts, it also speaks loudly about the importance they assign to electricity consumers. In any advanced country, multiple layers of defense will be placed, activated, and allowed to deal with such incidents before resorting to UFLS options. In Pakistan, however, the first line of action the authorities resort to during any system contingency is shedding of the loads of helpless electricity consumers.
The relentless pressure to cut costs should be diverted instead to those parts of the power sector that have received disproportionate attention in the past and are currently enjoying hefty returns on investments. We must set our priorities in the power sector right and balance our attention in every part of the power grid
This is not just an odd practice by the NTDC but is very well grounded in the applicable regulatory documents, for instance the NEPRA Grid Code of 2005 which permits the NTDC to automatically shed consumer load at a frequency decline threshold (49.4 Hz) which is fairly close to the nominal frequency (50 Hz).
During frequency excursions that are within a safe range of tolerance, generators all over the world are generally required to ride-through these situations without tripping, at least for some specified period, to allow system operators to manage these situations. Quicker and unnecessary generator tripping always makes it difficult for the operators to effectively deal with abnormal situations which could cause significant technical and financial costs to the whole grid.
Another glaring deficiency that has come to light from the recent blackout is the absence of a proper contingency management plan for the grid. This is a serious issue and NEPRA must ensure that the NTDC develops a formal “contingency management plan” and gets it approved from it as soon as practicable. NEPRA should also ensure that the adequacy and effectiveness of this plan is field tested by conducting drills every year or so. NAPRA can mandate this requirement either as part of the Grid Code or as a separate regulatory requirement by clearly defining the roles and responsibilities of the NTDC and other grid users during such a situation.
The inquiry conducted by the NTDC is reported to have placed the entire blame for the above blackout, plainly and squarely, on the local staff of the Guddo Power Station, rinsing its own hands clean off any responsibility whatsoever from the above incident that kept most of the country without electricity for over 20 hours. This reminds us of a humorous take on the term “responsibility” by Ambrose Bierce in his classic “Devil’s Dictionary” as “a detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of God, faith, luck or one’s neighbor. In days of astrology, it was customary to unload it upon a star.”
Anyway, we will not indulge in this blame game and let the relevant entities wrangle it out among them. Instead, we will focus below on three aspects which we fear will further compound the vulnerability of the power grid in Pakistan to similar contingencies. These are drying-up of investment in new as well as existing T&D networks and facilities to equip the grid to adequately serve the new duties that are being imposed on it as substantial renewable but intermittent and variable power generation capacities are added to the system and as our power sector moves from its present single-buyer setup to a wholesale competitive market.
The campaigns to power sector restructuring (unbundling, privatization, liberalization, and competition) that was unleashed around the world in the late 1980s and early 1990s had as its natural casualty drying up of capital investment in the T&D networks and facilities. For their natural monopoly character, the T&D portions of the power grids were either not opened for private investments or did not attract private investors. Generation projects have remained the focus of both the governments as well as private investors, while T&D systems receiving a cold shoulder. Consequently, power grids all over the world, including Pakistan, have become considerably weaker over time.
The demand on the T&D infrastructure in the meanwhile has grown tremendously and continues to grow with every passing day. Power grids which were mostly designed for highest levels of reliability now have to play a new role, as a commercial platform to enable a host of actors including central-station generators, distributed generators, intermittent and variable solar and wind generators, demand response and management by individual consumers or through their agents to come together. A system that was accustomed to a unidirectional flow of power from large and central-station generating facilities to consumers for much of its history now has to bear much higher back and forth power flows often in multiple paths for which it has not been designed and constructed.
We cannot afford to ignore this critical infrastructure, because without a modernized, robust, and resilient power grid, any effort to overlay additional duties on it, whether of a commercial or technical nature, will not be fruitful, and may defeat the very objectives of the power sector reforms. Its physical systems, its supporting services, its equipment and apparatus, its fault detection and protection schemes, its real-time status monitoring devices and systems, its operation and control systems and protocols, and the competencies and skills of its professional, all will have to be improved and strengthened which obviously cannot come without adequate funding.
Ministry of Energy and NEPRA must realize the criticality of this subtle and creeping weakness into the power grid and arrest it before it reaches a point of no return. Both must respond by identifying and encouraging new and imaginative ways to arrange adequate funding that the grid direly needs to effectively serve its expected role in the restructured power sector with wholesale competition already on the cards.
Their relentless pressure to cut costs should be diverted instead to those parts of the power sector that have received disproportionate attention from them in the past and are currently enjoying hefty returns on their investments. We must set our priorities in the power sector right and balance our attention in every part of the power grid. The sooner we did it, the better it would be to keep our lights on and the wheels of our economy turning.
The writer is a freelance consultant specialising in sustainable energy and power system planning and development