National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) has taken serious notice of another major breakdown in Karachi occurred on November 12, 2018 and directed K-Electric to provide a detailed report immediately in this regard.
Citing media reports, the Nepra has stated that Karachi witnessed another major breakdown in the early hours of Monday i.e. November 12, 2018 caused due to closure of Bin Qasim Power Plant resulting into the tripping of high tension line and KE's isolation from the national grid.
According to Nepra, the event of power breakdown caused inconvenience and people of Karachi suffered from long duration of power outages. Further, it was reported that 80% of city was affected including Gulistan-e-Johar, Gulshan Iqbal, Nazimabad, Bahadurabad, Liaquatabad, Mahmudabad, Saddar and other areas. It has also been highlighted that it's the 5th breakdown within a time period of two months.
The Authority has serious concern on the prevailing situation in respect of poor performance of KE's network and directed the power utility to provide detailed report regarding power breakdown along with status of preventive and corrective steps taken by it within three days.
According to KE spokesperson, the power utility has already intimated the regulatory authority via its letter dated 12 November 2018 regarding abrupt disconnection of power supply to Karachi from the national grid. The tripping in NTDC system due to adverse weather conditions caused rollover effect resulting in outage in various parts of the city on Monday. The letter explains that KE's Bin Qasim Power Station II and Korangi Combined Cycle Power Plant landed safely in island mode ensuring earliest possible restoration of power to the city.
Moreover, all strategic installations falling in affected areas were restored on priority. The KE also exported power for a few hours to initialize Port Qasim Coal Power Plant connected to the national grid.
The power utility has also taken up the matter of frequent tripping events of NTDC circuits during high humidity under the interim connectivity of Port Qasim Coal Power Plant generation, resulting in sudden disconnection from NTDC - causing serious problems to KE. The NTDC has been requested to carry out a complete system relay coordination study along with a meeting of all stakeholders to formulate a joint strategy to avert similar situation in future.
Since 2009, K-Electric has invested over US $ 2 billion to improve Karachi's power infrastructure and enhance the quality of services for its customers.
Major initiatives include exempting over 70% of Karachi from load shedding, including all industrial consumers and strategic installations. Further, T&D losses have been brought down from 36% to 20%, along with capacity addition of 1,057 MW to K-Electric's own generation. In addition, through continued investments, transmission & distribution capacity has been enhanced by around 29% and 63% respectively since 2009. This all has been achieved without distributing any dividends to shareholders from declared profits and, instead, routing this towards developing infrastructure.
Further, to accommodate the growing power demand of the city, KE has planned investments across the value chain. Ongoing projects include the US $ 450 million TP-1000 Transmission Project, which will add over 1,000 MVAs into the transmission system. The power utility is also working to diversify its fuel mix towards clean energy and in this regard, two 25-year EPAs with IPPs have already been signed which will add 100 MW of renewable energy to KE's system by 2019. Additionally, KE is also evaluating another 250 MWs of renewable projects to further increase the share of renewable energy based on solar, wind and biogas, in its system.
The spokesperson further stated that the power utility is fully committed to its vision statement of 'Energising Karachi' while serving over 25 million people of Karachi and its adjoining areas.
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