Govt official says Baloch militants blew up 220KV transmission lines between Sibbi and Quetta causing a backward surge of power to Guddu power plant, which in turn caused a cascading effect on entire national grid
Over 7,500MW of power has been added into the national grid after militants blew up transmission towers near Sibbi, Balochistan, Water and Power Secretary Younus Dagha said on Sunday.
“Transmission towers, 75, 76 in Sibbi were blown up by unidentified miscreants at 11:53pm on January 24,” he said, adding that 7500MW of power has been added into the grid.
While addressing the media, he said reports of an attack were coming in from midnight but since there could be no verification from local administration, the media was not informed about it. He added that the damage to the 220KV transmission lines between Sibbi and Quetta caused a backward surge of power to the Guddu power plant in Sindh, which in turn caused a cascading effect on the entire national grid.
“The entire system was restored by 8:30am in the morning, and now about 7500MW of power is in the national grid,” he said. “We are hopeful that we will improve it by tonight (Sunday night).”
Earlier, State Minister for Water and Power Abid Sher Ali apologised for inconvenience and said work was under process to restore electricity.
“On the prime minister’s directive, we are not to sleep till this problem is resolved,” he said in a message on Twitter.
“Power supply has been restored from all grid stations,” a National Transmission and Dispatch Company spokesperson said.
The spokesperson added 50 per cent of the power supply in Islamabad and Rawalpindi had been restored while 40 per cent was restored in Lahore.
The power failure, one of the worst in the country has experienced, caused power to be cut in major cities throughout the country, including Islamabad.
Earlier in the night, there had been speculation that the system had tripped due to a decline in power production as the country’s power plants run dangerously low on furnace oil supplies.
Dagha ruled out this explanation. “We had pushed up power production to 9,500MW by evening. Even 800MW more of hydroelectric power generation was available.”
Power consumption over the last few days has hovering around the 14,000MW mark. “Before this breakdown we were successfully managing the shortage by carrying out load shedding for industrial consumers,” Dagha said.
