Delays in maintenance cause 15 percent rise in power breakdowns

Inordinate delays in maintenance of transmission and distribution lines of NTDC has resulted countrywide 15% rise in power breakdowns against corresponding period. In some cases the power breakdown has reached to 90%, as there is no priority of the government in ensuring continuous power supply to the consumers. "Instead, the whole NTDC and DISCOs under it are busy in correcting the electricity bills," said one insider.
To the maximum, the government shows concerns over recovery and line losses, and nothing more. The insiders further added that the relevant staffs are panicked over simultaneous inquiries from the NAB, FIA and the Punjab government after excessive bills in recent past. As a result the maintenance of transmission and distribution lines has been put on the backburner by the relevant staff in all DISCOs.
It may be noted that 500KV transmission line of National Transmission and Dispatched Company (NTDC) from Guddu to Dadu tripped on December 21 due to heavy fog in the early hours, causing a sudden massive power breakdown in various parts of Sindh, including Karachi and Balochistan.
According to the insiders, there are standard SOPs regarding maintenance of transmission and distribution lines and necessary steps are taken to confront the challenges with change in weather. They said the NTDC is supposed to take care of fog, smog and rain-relating maintenance at the change of weather. The field staff is duty bound to check the insulators, jumpers, breakers, lines by cutting the trees, washing of transmission and distribution lines and cleaning of jumpers and insulators to avoid power disconnects. The international standard of maintenance, known as saifi-saidi, suggests that power interruptions should not be more than 10% and ideally it should be zero. However, the total sum of interruptions during July-October 2014 has reached to 182748 times in short terms, 122169 times on long (planned) terms and 65672 times on long (unplanned) terms on 11KV and 238 times on short terms, 31 times on long (planned) terms and 2153 times on long (unplanned) terms. It may be noted that the industrial consumers are paying heavy price of the situation, as they cannot afford repeated interruptions causing mechanical losses in general.