K-Electric has issued a press statement, stating that a large part of the city was restored with power in short time, despite the fact that the city faced heavy rain showers within a spell of 48 hours. The statement further added that such down pour was after three years, where a large part of city infrastructure was inundated with clogged sewerage, water drains and nallahs.
Ever since the heavy downpour in the city, almost all faults have been dealt with and PMTs were restored as soon as possible.
Teams worked tirelessly to overcome a localised fault in a PMT in Gulshan Omair, whereas in Korangi, Clifton, Nazimabad, North Karachi, Malir, PECHS, Bahadurabad, Shah Faisal, Defence and Lyari, the affected PMTs had been restored.
It is worth mentioning that initially a high number of feeders were tripped, out of which 50 percent were re-energised in less than one hour, and the actual number of affected feeders on ground were over 280 on day one and around 160 on day two. Most of these feeders were energized within a short span of one to five hours on both days of rain. However, there have been small pockets in different areas of the city which faced longer outages due to localised faults of PMT's, Kunda infested areas with short cables or water logged areas which affected the underground cables.
The press release further stated that Karachi has a unique atmosphere in which humidity, sea wind and saltish moisture deposit residues on cable joints, jumper's etc. In this environment if rain interval of coastal city is more than few years then these moisture deposits hardens on line joints and jumpers, which badly impacts the line with sudden rain. Due to this reason the number of affected feeders on day two were less than the first day, and continues to reduce with each subsequent rain. Unfortunately infrequent rains in Karachi due to global climate change magnifies this problem.
Additionally, parts of Karachi with katchi abadi's and power theft areas, with abundance of kunda's adds to the problem of short-circuiting and situation is further deteriorates due to water logging, where some feeders had to deliberately put off due to safety reasons, and consequently people face longer outages .
The K- Electric field teams and customer call centers, including the management has been working 24 hours to ensure supply and restoration of power to the cosmopolitan despite the stated challenges. As a result of KE team efforts there has been no major damage to power infrastructure and the localised faults are being restored.
K-Electric extends sincere apology to its customers for inconvenience caused by uncontrollable factors, and continues to restore power as quickly as possible.-PR